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Maikel Nabil is a child of his generation. The Internet is his medium; he blogs almost daily. Yet, the activity that the 27-year-old pursues as a matter of course and unmolested in Germany made him a target of the military government in his Egyptian homeland. By Martin Bruch

“What kind of dwelling do you live in?” asks Paul Rentrop. The first to respond is David from Mexico. “I live in a flat.” Rentrop, who works as a teacher at the Goethe-Institut Göttingen, nods and repeats David’s words. The next is Martha from Belgrade, who lives in a dormitory. Then, the teacher asks Maikel. “I live in my flat,” says the young man with the purple cap, “in the northeast of Cairo, in a two bedroom flat.” It is a perfectly good sentence, grammatically speaking. Yet, it is not true – not anymore. Since the middle of May, Maikel Nabil Sanad has been living in Göttingen. Prior to that, he was living in a prison in Egypt. One day in March 2011, the military police knocked on his door and took him away.

After the lesson, Maikel Nabil takes off his cap, walks downstairs to the cafeteria of the Göttingen Goethe-Institut. It is one of the first cold days of September, but the cafeteria is underground, where it is warm and tidy and smells of youth hostel. “I haven’t gotten used to the German winter yet.” Maikel Nabil speaks English and smiles mischievously. “Göttingen is smaller than my street in Cairo. But I like Göttingen. It’s a peaceful town with a lot of students. That helped me get accustomed to it very quickly,” says the 27-year-old, who, in his sneakers, jeans and hoody, looks like the other students in his German class at first glance. But, what he has gone through over the past one and half years differs considerably from the biographies of his classmates. They were experiences for which they do not envy him.

When the military police were standing in his flat there was not much time. The soldiers took the blogger to El-Marg prison on the outskirts of Cairo. He had to leave his books, his mobile phone and in particular his computer behind. The charge was insulting the military and misleading public opinion. A month later, a military court sentenced him to three years imprisonment. The sentence was followed by drawn out appeals procedures, a hunger strike and confinement in a psychiatric ward that was prevented at the last minute. In the spring of 2011, when the Arab Revolution arrived in Egypt, Maikel Nabil had dealt critically with the Egyptian army in his blog. He had documented brutal attacks against protesters, listed cases of torture and arrests. After the downfall of Hosni Mubarak, Maikel Nabil was the first blogger to be arrested.

“My activities usually focus on things that no one else is looking at,” Maikel Nabil relates in the underground cafeteria; he speaks quietly and precisely, as if the time before prison and the time after blended seamlessly. Maikel Nabil was imprisoned for over 300 days. He was released on the first anniversary of the Revolution in January 2012, together with 1,950 other inmates. The blogger criticizes this amnesty by pointing out his right to freedom of speech. “I was in prison because of my principles,” he says, “because I fought for my ideals.” During this time, human rights organizations and politicians took his side; an international public watched the first steps taken by the Egyptian military regime.

Travelling in Germany

Maikel Nabil had already caused a stir in his homeland as Egypt’s first conscientious objector. That was in autumn of 2010. Prior to that he had studied veterinary medicine, but increasingly became interested in politics and began writing his blog. “At the time, I decided to change my career,” says Maikel Nabil with a light in his eyes that seems gentle, but also unrelenting. One can imagine him and his friends demonstrating every day on the streets of Cairo before the fall of Mubarak. Yet, it was not until the dictator was out of the way that everything really began. During his months in prison, he also received a visit by a reporter from Die Zeit. “For a young man who is accustomed to communicating daily with the entire world,” she writes in the weekly, “he doesn’t seem the slightest bit broken.”

Since Maikel Nabil’s arrival in Germany he has travelled quite a lot. He was invited to hold talks and panel discussions in about twenty German cities. There is another event this week. Above the cafeteria, in the prestigious wooden panelled hall of the Goethe-Institut Göttingen, the subject will be the Development and Perspective of the Arab Spring. “The Internet broke the monopoly of the media in Egypt,” says Maikel Nabil. “It is the tool of our generation.” He needs it right now to stay in touch with his friends in Egypt, to continue to take part in the political discourse.


In Germany, Maikel Nabil updates his blog almost daily as well. He is also writing a book about his time in prison. “The country that supported me the most while I was in prison was Germany,” he says. “I noticed that I would not feel like a stranger here.” Maikel Nabil thought a great deal about the second reason for coming to Germany. “It was in Europe – in Germany – that the terrible ideologies of the last century had their beginnings. They were also imported to my country. I have to understand how these ideas came to be – and how Germany was able to liberate itself from them. We need these democratic experiences in my country.”

A few weeks after our encounter in Göttingen, Maikel Nabil is living in Erfurt. He has begun a two-year Master’s course at the Willy Brandt School of Public Policy. He then wants to return to Egypt. Does he think it will be dangerous to return? “It’s dangerous for any activist who lives in a dictatorship. It was always dangerous for me to be in Egypt. But, the problem isn’t being in Egypt or not. The existence of the dictatorship is the problem.”