Egyptian poet convicted of insulting president freed on appeal

Jul 18, 2009, 11:56 GMT

Cairo - An Egyptian appeals court on Saturday reversed a jail sentence passed against a provincial educator who wrote a satirical poem a previous court had ruled 'insulted the president.'

In May, an Egyptian judge ruled that Mounir Said Hanna, a 55-year-old administrator at a vocational school in the southern Egyptian town of Minya, some 240 kilometres south of Cairo, was guilty of 'insulting the president' for writing a satirical poem.

Hanna received a sentence of three years in prison and a fine of 100,000 Egyptian pounds (18,000 US dollars) for the poem, after the security officer at his school reported him to authorities.

But an appeals court on Saturday overturned that verdict on the grounds that the educator had written the poem for his own amusement, and had not intended to distribute it.

That Hanna 'was writing his thoughts and did not distribute (the poem) to anyone' showed 'a lack of criminal intent,' the court found.

Hanna's acquittal 'opened a new chapter for freedom of expression. This legal victory will set an important precedent in many freedom of expression cases,' Hanna's lawyer, the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information's Hamdi al-Assiuti, told the German Press Agency dpa.

'We were afraid that the court would support the first verdict and imprison my brother, but the acquittal made us regain our confidence in justice,' Hanna's brother, Hanna Said Hanna, told dpa.

Hanna's poem read, 'The mirror would sparkle for one person, but you sparkled in every one/ The camera flashed before taking a picture, but your sparkling is in audio as well/ Sparkle, you who made life beautiful / Sparkle, not anyone can sparkle / Sparkle, you who made people feel confused and lost/ Sparkle, you who made people feel happy and lost.'