The blogosphere has had an impact on US politics; can it help political blogger "Kareem Amer" (a pseudonym for Abdel Karim Soliman)?

Sandmonkey passes along a report from The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information. Per their press release:

Karim who is an Egyptian blogger sentenced to prison for 4 years for 'vilifying religions' and defaming the president was tortured & that was ordered and supervised by an investigation officer in Borg Alarab prison. Karim was also ordered into a solitary cell where he was assaulted again and had one of his teeth broken; this assault's date came to mark one year since Karim was sent to jail.

Several bloggers have weighed in: Instapundit, Atlas Shrugs, Gateway Pundit, Freedom's Zone and others.

Wikipedia's entry is under a different spelling: Kareem Amer. For background information and recent protests around the world, see FreeKareem.org. Posted yesterday from London:

After about 40 minutes in the cold ... one of the embassy officials ... approached us.
...
What was most galling about his position was his cultural relativism, and his denial of fundamental rights for all people in all places. He seemed to suggest that just as British culture condones the wearing of eye-catchingly short skirts (something that he said he found “offensive”), Egyptian culture condones the punishment of those unlucky enough to be caught saying the wrong thing – and that we ought to ‘tolerate’ that in the way that he tolerated mini-skirt-wearing women in London. We countered the official’s arguments as respectfully as possible, but our protestations that many Egyptians and Muslims supported Kareem’s cause fell on deaf ears. We gently reminded him that Egypt had signed the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights, and that article 19 (section 2) of this covenant stated, rather unequivocally: “Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice”. We told him that the international community, as a result, was watching Egypt’s conduct with a critical eye – but he seemed unfazed.

Nonetheless, the official promised us that he would return to his office, read Kareem’s blog again and would consider the issue more fully. We thanked him repeatedly for coming out to speak to us, and we continue to hope that the arguments we made will help influence him and his colleagues to reconsider their position on the case.

The small New York demonstration also got a hearing:

we went up to the second floor of the set-back building to let the consulate know that we were downstairs. As we prepared to walk out the door, the receptionist motioned to me.

“Would one of you please come and meet with someone?”

Which is how I ended up in the office of Mohammad Khalil, an assistant to the Egyptian consul. He was very polite and wanted to know all the details of Kareem’s case. “What is he charged with?” he asked me in Arabic. “Writing incendiary comments about the president and the religious establishment,” I told him, and then was quick to point out that the Free Kareem campaign isn’t about his views, but about the appropriate response to someone criticizing the government or Islam. He promised to look into the matter and I gave him my email address so he could follow up. This might mean that I will have a very interesting time at border control next time I visit Egypt

Visit the site for more reports from Prague, Rio de Janeiro, Paris, Stockholm, Brussels, Berlin, and Wash. DC, plus announcements for several other cities around the world.

For additional background on blogging and human rights in Egypt, see Ethan Zuckerman's Sept. 16, 2006 post at My heart's in Accra.