YouTube briefly suspended his account in 2007 after complaints that the torture videos he posted were too graphic. The account was restored after Abbas' work was credited with highlighting Egypt's human rights record.
Abbas' ethics were questioned recently when he posted part of a video purportedly showing the torture and sexual humiliation of a girl by a plainclothes police officer. The video was sent to him by another source and Abbas featured it with the headline: "Police officer forces girl to strip naked?" The story, however, identified the assailant as an "alleged" policeman.
"I don't have proof that it's authentic. . . . But I do believe it's a police officer," he said.
Abbas began blogging in earnest in 2004 amid demonstrations against Mubarak's camp. The president cracked down on opponents, including the radical Muslim Brotherhood, and held on to power in a 2005 election widely criticized as undemocratic. Abbas said the president has cleverly sedated the country with lies that have kept more than 40% of the population living on less than $2 a day.
"Things will be unpredictable when Mubarak dies," he said of the 79-year-old president. "There might be a military coup, a people's revolution or an Islamist revolution. . . . I was more cynical before. Now, I feel more sympathetic [toward the people] and scared."
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jeffrey.fleishman @latimes.com
