We are really excited because our coverage of the release of Fouad Mourtada was mentioned in the New York Times‘ blog, The Lede. (According to them, we’re a “rights group”.) Click the image to read their full post on Fouad.

This is a huge victory for digital activism. Thank you to all the people who supported the campaign, both online and offline!

CASABLANCA, March 18 - Fouad Mourtada was released from Oukacha Prison at approximately 8:00pm local time today, having received a royal pardon.

Mr. Mourtada, a 26-year old IT engineer, was taken into custody on February 5th, 2008, and was questioned regarding a fake Facebook profile of King Mohammed VI’s younger brother, Prince Moulay Rachid, which he had created on January 15. During his interrogation, Mr. Mourtada reports that he was beaten, spat on and

Yet there is another Fouad - Fouad Alfarhan - who has been in jail for three months with no release imminent. Fouad, who is a politically vocal blogger, was arrested on December 10th, and an online campaign to free him started soon after.

However, when President Bush visited Saudi Arabia in mid-January, Fouad's wife asked the people taking part in the campaign to back down, fearing that the campaign

Two weeks after his arrest, on February 22, Fouad was sentenced to 3 years in prison and a fine of over $1000 for "identity fraud of an electronic document."

Here are some I took here at Harvard:

His sister Amina has set up a web page www.helpfouad.com to push for the decision to be reversed. Part of this effort (more actions to come) is a petition to free Fouad.

Please click the image below to sign the petition:

On February 5, computer engineer Fouad Mourtada was blindfolded and taken from his house in Casablanca, Morocco. He was taken to a police station where he was harassed and spat on by local police. Two weeks later, on February 22, he was sentence to three years in prison and a $1350 fine. His crime was creating a fake profile of Prince Moulay Rachid, the King's brother on Facebook.

As Laila Lalami comments on The Nation's web site, "there are fake profiles on Facebook for everyone from Brad Pitt to Mother Teresa, from King Abdullah to Osama bin Laden.

I first became interested in digital activism in 2004-2005 while living in Morocco. It was the fall after my graduation from Vassar College and I was working as a Programs Assistant at the National Democratic Institute in

"no to corruption"

"we Moroccans living abroad want the right to vote."

I was also really tickled to learn that they