A 27 year-old Egyptian blogger has been released on bail pending an appeal of his 12 December conviction for blasphemy and contempt of religion. He was sentenced to three years in jail. A Coptic Christian turned atheist, Alber Saber was arrested at his home three months ago after neighbours accused him of circulating the anti-Islam film Innocence of Muslims on his Facebook page. Although Saber denied the charge — and the prosecutor did not produce any evidence to support that claim — he was convicted and kept behind bars in a tiny cell at Cairo’s Tora prison until his release on Monday. Saber ran an atheist group on Facebook and the prosecution is based on comparative religion material found on his bookshelf [...]

Maher El Gohary is a broken and defeated man who has grown tired of life on the run. After a four-year battle to have the Egyptian state recognise his Christian faith, he is seriously contemplating reverting to Islam. “I am seen as an outcast and have lost everything: my family, my home, my dignity and my inheritance,” he laments. For Maher and his daughter Dina, life has become “practically intolerable”. A former Muslim who converted to Christianity 30 years ago, Maher publicly announced their change of faith in 2008 when he filed a lawsuit against the Mubarak government hoping to gain the right to change the religious status on his national identification card from Islam to Christianity. He was only the second [...]

In July the Russian parliament approved a bill designed to increase the Kremlin’s control of the internet. The new laws grant the government sweeping powers to block access to internet resources. Russian Wikipedia blacked out to protest the law claiming that it would “lead to the creation of a Russian analogue to China’s great firewall”. Campaigners fear the new rules will lead to widespread censorship. Even though the law doesn’t come into effect until November, Russian internet service providers are already coming under pressure to block internet resources and services. Here, Andrei Soldatov tells us what Russia censored in September Click here to find out what Russia censored in October

Alber Saber, a young Egyptian blogger and computer science graduate has been arrested and detained for allegedly posting a trailer for an anti-Islam film on Facebook. The trailer for the film “Innocence of Muslims” deemed insulting to Islam and the Prophet Muhammad, had earlier been lifted from YouTube in Egypt after it sparked anti-US protests.

Stanislav Samutsevich, 73, is the father of the imprisoned Pussy Riot member, Ekaterina Samutsevich. She, together with Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alekhina, was sentenced to two years in the women’s prison colony on charges of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred after performing an anti-Putin protest songin Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral.