Email apparently from freed Saudi blogger Fouad al-Farhan

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I’ve received an email apparently from Fouad al-Farhan, the Saudi Arabian blogger who was detained without charge for 137 days and whose case was taken up by bloggers around the world, including in New Zealand.

It would be nice to feel the email is genuine but in the cesspit that is the international blogosphere that is hard to tell immediately. The IP address for the email goes to California, not Saudi Arabia, and the blog address it gives, though having Fouad’s name and having been opened in 2006, has no entries.

In the hope it is genuine, I will report that it thanks New Zealand bloggers (David Farrar is mentioned by name) for supporting Fouad during his detention and says he has liked New Zealand since he was a kid and Kiwi television wrestler Tony Garea visited his village to promote Anchor cheese in the mid-1980s.

“My government put me in a solitary confinement for 137 days. My cell was 2×3 meters. I never saw anybody except the interrogators once every couple of weeks. The rest of the days I was alone. They didn’t allow me to watch TV, listen to radio, read any books or magazine or newspaper. I was not allowed to have a pen and a paper to write. I never saw the sun. I was completely cut off the world. All I had is our holy book (Koran) and prayer rug. So, I had a lot of time to think about my life. One of things that always came on mind in prison was New Zealand and my dream backpacking journey. I didn’t know that my case has reached NZ. I didn’t know that someone there in that beloved land thought, wrote, and cared about me. Internet is just great and you people deserve the land you love in.”

Having read this several times, I felt it didn’t quite have the ring of truth. It doesn’t read like a scam (there is no request for money or anything like that), but I found it hard to believe someone in detention without charge in Saudi Arabia for criticising the treatment of political prisoners there (and becoming one himself in the process) would be dreaming of a backpacking trip to New Zealand. Especially as Fouad has a wife and children and a good job in IT, in which he trained in the United States.

However, on replying to the email, I received two further responses, assuring me the sender really is Fouad and that he was using a proxy server to get around Saudi Arabia’s restrictions on internet use.

Fouad, if you really are the author of these emails, I am humbled you sent them. You are a courageous man and your wife’s and daughter’s admiration of you shone through in their public comments while you were in jail.

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Filed under Blogosphere, Human rights

Tags: Fouad al-Farhan, Saudi Arabia