Egypt arrests prominent blogger

CAIRO (Reuters) – Egyptian security forces detained prominent blogger and journalist Wael Abbas on Wednesday, two security sources and his lawyer said, the latest activist to be arrested in what rights groups say is a campaign to silence government critics.

Abbas, an award-winning journalist and rights activist, was taken from his home early on Wednesday and his whereabouts are unknown, his lawyer Gamal Eid said on Twitter.

An Interior Ministry official said he was checking the report. Two security sources, who declined to be identified, confirmed Abbas had been detained but gave no details on the reasons.

The Arab Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) said armed police raided Abbas’s home at dawn, without presenting an arrest warrant, blind-folded him and took him in his pajamas to an unknown location.

In a message on his Twitter account, Eid said Abbas had been “kidnapped, not arrested.”

Abbas first became known in activist circles after posting videos that showed police brutality. One such video published in 2006 caused such uproar that it prompted an investigation resulting in a rare conviction of two policemen.

Abbas was awarded the International Center for Journalists’ Knight International Journalism Award in 2007.

Rights groups accuse the government of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi of a sweeping crackdown on dissent which they say is the worst ever for Egypt.

Since 2013, when Sisi took power, thousands of Islamist opponents, as well as scores of liberal activists and journalists, have been imprisoned by Egyptian authorities.