Linkage

(AP Photo/Nasser Nasser; caption)

The above is Osama Hassan Mustafa Nasr, aka Abu Omar, the Egyptian cleric seized in Milan by Bourne-wannabe CIA agents and rendered to the tender mercies of the Egyptian detention system. [His case is another subject raised in the WSJ fulminations discussed in the post below].

Demonstrating if nothing else a considerable talent for public relations, Abu Omar popped up today at the trial of Egyptian blogger Abdel Kareem Soliman ("Kareem Amer"), sentenced to 4 years in prison for insulting al-Azhar university and President Hosni Mubarak. Omar recounted his own abuse in an Egyptian prison and demanded to be returned to Italy, where he had been legally resident.

What he has therefore managed to exemplify is that rights are a messy business -- deciding who should get them and who won't is incredibly difficult to implement, and furthermore, if you're denying them to "bad people" (Abu Omar), you're probably denying them to "good people" as well (bloggers). So it would be nice if all the conservative bloggers who hitch their wagons to Abdel Kareem Soliman acknowledge that the character of the repression they denounce in his case is present in Abu Omar's case as well.

UPDATE: Cases where a conservative highlights the blogger case with no mention of the US willingness to dump Abu Omar into the same jails: Iain Dale; Cliff May, (tbc). And, to their credit, the reporters at the US State Department daily press briefing zeroed in very quickly on the contradictions in the US position: that Egyptian prisons are good enough for the subjects of the rendition policy, but not for the blogger.