Egyptian blogger Sandmonkey arrested UPDATE: released

People are saying on Twitter that influential blogger Sandmonkey was arrested by Egyptian authorities and his site was taken down.  His site, www.sandmonkey.org is indeed offline, although there are web caches available.  American Thinker reports this news and publishes one of Sandmonkey's last screeds:

If you are in Egypt, I am calling on all of you to head down to Tahrir today and Friday. It is imperative to show them that the battle for the soul of Egypt isn't over and done with. I am calling you to bring your friends, to bring medical supplies, to go and see what Mubarak's gurantees look like in real life. Egypt needs you. Be Heroes.

[...]:

You watched on TV as "Pro-Mubarak Protesters" - thugs who were paid money by NDP members by admission of High NDP officials- started attacking the peaceful unarmed protesters in Tahrir square.

They attacked them with sticks, threw stones at them, brought in men riding horses and camels- in what must be the most surreal scene ever shown on TV- and carrying whips to beat up the protesters. And then the Bullets started getting fired and Molotov cocktails started getting thrown at the Anti-Mubarak Protesters as the Army standing idly by, allowing it all to happen and not doing anything about it.

Dozens were killed, hundreds injured, and there was no help sent by ambulances. The Police never showed up to stop those attacking because the ones who were captured by the Anti-mubarak people had police ID's on them. They were the police and they were there to shoot and kill people and even tried to set the Egyptian Museum on Fire.

The Aim was clear: Use the clashes as pretext to ban such demonstrations under pretexts of concern for public safety and order, and to prevent disunity amongst the people of Egypt. 

PJ TV reported that Sandmonkey is disappointed in Obama's handling of the Egyptian protest. He says that Obama should support America's ideals (democracy) over America's interests. I bet the fact that he says he doesn't like Obama but that he liked George Bush didn't go over well at the White House. My guess is he will not be receiving any care packages from the White House during his incarceration.



Sandmonkey reports that Muslim Brotherhood has little to do with the protest. And that they wanted to be unarmed in order to highlight the violence of those they were opposing.

This man appears to represent the community of well-meaning bloggers and social media activists who started the protest. Whether they would be able to protect Egypt from takeover from violent islamic extremists is in doubt. Bloggers would need military help in order to make that happen.

UPDATE: @ramyyaacoub tweets that Sandmonkey was released and "did not run away" from authorities. He is now headed for a safe location.