Maikel Nabil, the Egyptian pacifist whose case I wrote about on April 5, has been sentenced to three years in jail for "publishing false information" and "insulting the armed forces".

His trial – of a kind that became common under the Mubarak regime – was the first since the revolution and featured some of the familiar old practices. Al-Masry al-Youm reports:

The court misled Nabil's defence team and gave the sentence after the team had left the courtroom ... Activists say the court said it was postponing the ruling, but then Nabil was taken to prison.

Joe Stork of Human Rights Watch commented: "Maikel Nabil's three-year sentence may be the worst strike against free expression in Egypt since the Mubarak government jailed the first blogger for four years in 2007. The sentence is not only severe, but it was imposed by a military tribunal after an unfair trial."

Posted by Brian Whitaker, 12 April 2011.