NADIA ABOU EL MAGD, ALEXANDRIA
An Egyptian blogger was yesterday sentenced to four years in prison for insulting Islam, the Prophet Muhammad and Egypt's president, sending a chill through internet writers who fear a state crackdown.

Abdel Kareem Nabil, 22, a former student at Al Azhar University, an Islamic institution, used his blog, or web log, to voice secularist views and criticise conservative Muslims. He also lashed out at Al Azhar, Sunni Islam's leading religious centre, calling it "the university of terrorism" and accusing it of encouraging extremism.

His conviction was condemned by Amnesty International and other international and Egyptian rights groups and stunned fellow bloggers.

"I am shocked," said Wael Abbas, who reports police abuses and other human rights violations. "This is a terrible message to anyone who intends to express his opinion and to bloggers in particular."

A court in Alexandria sentenced Nabil to three years in prison for insulting Islam and the Prophet and inciting sectarian strife, and another year for insulting President Hosni Mubarak.

Nabil was led outside to a prison van. Seconds after the door closed, a reporter heard the sound of a slap and a shriek of pain from Nabil.

His lawyer, Ahmed Seif el-Islam, said he would appeal, saying the ruling would "terrify other bloggers and will negative impact on the freedom of expression in Egypt". Nabil had faced up to nine years in prison.

Egypt arrested a number of bloggers last year, most of them connected to the pro-democracy movement. Nabil was arrested in November and while other bloggers were freed, he was prosecuted - a sign of the sensitivity about his writings on religion.

Alaa Abdel-Fattah, a pro-reform blogger who was detained for six weeks last year, said the conviction for insulting Mubarak would "have a chilling effect on the rest of the bloggers".

"We are enduring oppression, poverty and torture, so the least we can do is insult the president," he said.

Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and Reporters Without Borders warned the ruling would hurt freedom of expression in Egypt, a top US ally in the Middle East. Amnesty said it considered Nabil a prisoner of conscience.

Nabil, who used the blogger name Kareem Amer, was expelled from Al Azhar, where he was a law student, in March for his scathing attacks on conservative Muslims. Al Azhar then pushed for a trial.

The judge said Nabil insulted the Prophet with a piece he wrote in 2005 after riots in which angry Muslims attacked a Christian church over a play deemed offensive to Islam.

"Muslims revealed their true ugly face and appeared to all the world that they are full of brutality, barbarism and inhumanity," Nabil said of the riots.

He blasted Al Azhar as the "other face of the coin of al Qaeda" and called for the university to be dissolved or turned into a secular institution.

In other postings, Nabil referred to "the symbol of tyranny, Hosni Mubarak" during the presidential elections in 2005, adding: "Say goodbye to democracy for me."

A surprise visitor to the trial was Osama Hassan Mustafa Nasr, an Egyptian cleric. He publicly declared for the first time that Egyptian officials tortured him in prison after he was kidnapped in Italy, allegedly by CIA agents, and sent to Egypt for interrogation.

The claims sharpened the controversy over the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" programme, after Italy indicted 26 Americans and five Italian agents accused of snatching him.

Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, was released last week after four years in custody.

"I was subjected to the worst kind of torture in Egyptian prisons. I have scars of torture all over my body," he told journalists.-AP