An Egyptian court has sentenced a dissident blogger to four years in prison for insulting Islam and defaming President Hosni Mubarak. It is the first time a blogger has been jailed in Egypt for writings published on the internet.

Mr Suleiman, 22, who has been in custody since November last year, was arrested after posting a weblog entry critical of Al-Azhar University – the highest seat of Sunni Islamic learning.

The posting, appearing under the blogger’s pen name Karim Amer, sated: “I say to Al-Azhar and its university and its professors and preachers who stand against anyone who thinks differently to them: ‘You are destined for the rubbish bin of history, where you will find no one to cry for you, and your regime will end like others have.”

Despite worldwide appeals for his release, the court ruled that the young Muslim blogger should be jailed for posting a string of writings insulting Islam. “The Moharram Beik criminal court has sentenced the blogger after he created a website through which he attacked Islam,” judge Ayman Okkaz said. “On his site, he claimed that Islam incited terrorism, hatred and murder.”

Dalia Ziyada, a fellow blogger and human rights activist said that Mr Suleiman’s defence team would lodge an appeal on Saturday.

Egypt recently started to suppress political bloggers, who rose to prominence by challenging Mr Mubarak’s regime during the 2005 elections, and more recently by highlighting cases of police brutality.

Reporters Without Borders, a press freedom organisation, accused the Egyptian regime of breaking a promise to liberalise press laws. "Almost three years ago to the day, President Mubarak promised to abolish prison sentences for press offences,” a spokesman said. “Suleiman's conviction and sentence is a message of intimidation to the rest of the Egyptian blogosphere, which had emerged in recent years as an effective bulwark against the regime's authoritarian excesses."

Amnesty International joined the criticism, describing the outcome of the case as “yet another slap in the face of freedom of expression in Egypt.”

"The Egyptian authorities must protect the peaceful exercise of freedom of expression, even if the views expressed might be perceived by some as offensive,” Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, the group’s deputy programme director for the region, said.

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