Alaa's arrest: a recap.

__UPDATE:__ Alaa released

Here is a summary of what happened in the past two weeks regarding the arrest of the most prominent [Egypt|http://freealaa.blogspot.com]ian blogger and a personal friend.

[Alaa Abd El-Fatah (a.k.a Alaa Ahmed Seif)|http://manalaa.net/] is a blogger, [geek|http://eglug.org/user/1], activist and [a remarkable person|http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/13/1346237&tid=190&tid=126&tid=11&tid=106]. Arrested, among others, on the 7th of May during a peaceful protest. He was protesting the arrest of [Malek|http://malek-x.net] and others. Malek, a blogger, [was arrested on the 24th of April|http://www.manalaa.net/will_they_release_the_detainees] while protesting. [Lately, few were released while the rest will remain for 15 more days|http://freealaa.blogspot.com/2006/05/detention-extended-15-days.html]. They were all protesting for [independence of the judiciary|http://baheyya.blogspot.com/2006/04/tribulations-of-self-determination_20.html].

Bloggers around the world identified with Alaa and [started a big campaign|http://freealaa.blogspot.com]. This campaign [made|http://metimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20060519-103859-8164r] [some|http://allafrica.com/stories/200605120732.html] [noise|http://www.guardian.co.uk/egypt/story/0,,1770311,00.html] in the [international|http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/middleeastreports/s_451872.html] [mainstream media|http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-05-16-egyptian-blogger_x.htm]. The campaign was successful in making many bloggers and geeks know about Alaa's arrest. They used several tools and ideas. They [quickly reported the arrest on their blogs|http://instapundit.com/archives/030142.php], they [created banners|http://freealaa.blogspot.com/2006/05/free-alaa-banner.html], [a dedicated blog|http://freealaa.blogspot.com], [signed petitions|http://freealaa.blogspot.com/2006/05/free-alaa-petition.html] and [other creative ideas|http://freealaa.blogspot.com/2006/05/g-b4a-as-test-case-in-web-20-activism.html]. Such as a [googlebombingforalaa|http://internationaldemoblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/google-bombing-for-alaa.html], [a drupal module|http://bler.webschuur.com/freealaa_googlebomb_drupal_filter], [flash animation|http://freealaa.blogspot.com/2006/05/flash-animation.html], [video blogs|http://freealaa.blogspot.com/2006/05/vlogging-for-alaa.html], [a interactive map of people supporting him|http://www.frappr.com/freealaa], a [Wikipedia page|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaa_Abd_El-Fatah] and [they collected and tagged all links|http://del.icio.us/tag/manalaa.net] they found about the arrest. On top of all that Alaa [blogged from his prison cell|http://www.manalaa.net/alaa_blogs_from_prison].