Ehud Mubarak jails poet for verse insulting him

An Egyptian has been sentenced to three years in prison because he wrote a satirical poem about President Hosni Mubarak.

A judicial source told AFP on Tuesday that civil servant Mounir Said Hanna Marzuq was given the maximum sentence for insulting the head of state.

Marzuq wrote the poem for friends in the hope that one day it would be turned into a song.

He was jailed in Maghagha, southern Egypt in May after a colleague lodged a formal complaint about the poem deemed insulting to Mubarak, who has been in power since 1981.

Earlier, the imprisoned poet's brother appealed to the 81-year-old Mubarak for clemency, the independent Al-Masri Al-Youm reported. The paper did not publish the offending verses.

According to Egyptian law, anyone insulting the president can be jailed for between 24 hours and three years. PressTV