Wael Abbas is a 35-year-old Sunni Muslim. He attended graduate school at Ain Shams University and currently works for the German News Agency as a Middle East Correspondent. He currently works for the German News Agency as a Middle East Correspondent. Abbas is author of one of Egypt’s best-known blogs, misrdigital.com (“Egyptian Awareness”), and is a multiple-award-winning anti-torture watchdog. He is not affiliated with, or supported by, any Egyptian political party or movement.

Abbas has received numerous threats due to his reports, but has managed to remain out of jail. His videos have helped to lift the veil on Egypt’s professed commitment to democracy, revealing the regime as one of the world’s foremost violators of human rights. One prominent video of Egyptian police brutality, in which the officers beat and sodomized a bus driver, even led to the conviction of two police officers. The two were sentenced to three years in prison for their involvement in the incident. On June 30, 2009, Abbas was detained without cause at Cairo International Airport after returning from a trip to Sweden, but freed after a few hours. On February 4, 2011, he was arrested by the army and released on the same day.