Egyptian Charged For Threatening Facebook Post

An anonymous reader writes "The Egyptian Military Prosecution has charged 26-year-old activist and blogger Asmaa Mahfouz for allegedly defaming the country's ruling generals and calling for armed operations against the military and the judiciary. Mahfouz, a prominent activist, was accused of using Facebook to call for the assassinations of Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) members and certain judges."

Comments

Newsflash: Freedom of Speech has limits.

[intellitech]

Freedom of Speech typically does not permit incitement to violence.

Furthermore, inciting harm to powerful leaders, regardless of motivation or full intent, is probably not wise (and especially so in an unstable nation). And, if you follow through and do so, you best make yourself hard to find, and go completely off grid. Otherwise, you'll likely be caught, and you'll find yourself in a very uncomfortable situation, to say the least.

Freedom of Speech does not protect all speech. It only permits speech that can hurt people’s feelings, but it does not permit speech that can cause objective harm to people’s bodies, possessions or liberty.

Source (for more in-depth reading on the subject): http://www.themoralliberal.com/2011/02/18/on-freedom-of-speech-and-incitement-to-violence/

Re:Newsflash: Freedom of Speech has limits.

[metacell]

Have you read the article?

This was what Mahfouz allegedly wrote, translated from Arabic:
“If justice is not achieved and the justice system fails us, no-one should feel upset or surprised if armed gangs emerge to carry out assassinations. As long as there is no law and there is no justice, anything can happen, and nobody should be upset.”

Sounds a little too vague to me to constitute an illegal threat. Or as Mahfouz herself said:
"There is no truth in these accusations, I was only warning the military council that the absence of justice will lead to chaos."

Re:Newsflash: Freedom of Speech has limits.

[cheekyjohnson]

Which probably is a good thing.

I don't know about that. Letting them make exceptions as they please (instead of creating an amendment or going through the proper procedures) isn't wise, in my opinion.

Re:Newsflash: Freedom of Speech has limits.

[geminidomino]

Yes, but in the U.S. you would go to a normal court, and you would have the right to a trial by jury

Unless, of course, the speaker also happened to be Muslim or had, at some time, walked into the same Starbucks that once employed a known terrorist's father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate.

Re:The post wasn't a threat

[Derekloffin]

You're right, it was a veiled threat... Sadly I can see that actual verbiage being seen as a threat. Predicting violence is the same kind of thing you hear out of your stereotypical mobster muscling a store owner for protection money. In a place like Egypt, making statements like that on the net is just asking for trouble.

Re:Fascists, or?

[Nick Ives]

Calling for the assassination of unelected generals who are engaged in an opposition purge as part of a revolutionary strategy isn't evil or immoral.

Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!