As surreal as it may sound,
Twitter can get you out of jail! The catch…send the right message to as many
people as possible as fast as you can and voila!
UC Berkeley journalism graduate
student James Karl Buck (29), former Oakland Tribune multimedia intern, was arrested
during a demonstration in Mahalla El-Kobra, an industrial city in the Nile
Delta.
What the Egyptian authorities
didn’t probably expect was the prompt reaction of a large circle of friends in
the United States and the anti-government bloggers in Egypt, who were sent an
instant text message from his cellular phone: “ARRESTED,” the San Jose Mercury News reports.
The micro-blogging service
allows users to send text messages up to 140 characters long, and the message
Buck sent had the desired outcome: his friends called the University, the
American Embassy, as well as the Associated Press, the International Herald
Tribune and other media.
The result: he was released the
next day, although according to his affirmations, the Egyptian authorities told
him just hours after his arrest, in the middle of the night, that he was a
free man.
He refused to leave for the sake
of his friend and interpreter Mohammed Salah Ahmed Maree, who was arrested with
him but is being held incommunicado by local authorities.
“I said, ‘No’ and I stayed for
12 more hours and we started a hunger strike at some point,” Buck told the San
Jose Mercury News. “But they grabbed him and put him in a different holding
area. Finally, they said they had transferred him to another prison.”
What Buck wants now is justice
for his friend, who is still in jail: “I’m very angry and I’m frustrated. I’m
an American and I got released and he didn’t (…) I’m not going to stop until he
gets out,” he said.
His determination is real, as he opened an
online petition at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/free-mohammed-maree
for his friend, and further plans a demonstration is support for Maree.
“Mohammed is 23 years old and is
missing in Mahalla, Egypt after having been cleared of all charges. He is being
held to intimidate and punish journalists. Demand his immediate and
unconditional release,” the site says.
