CAIRO (AP) — An Egyptian court sentenced a blogger to three years in jail with hard labor on Saturday for "spreading false news" after he said about 45 percent of married Egyptian women have the readiness for "immorality" and to cheat on their husbands. 
 
 The court said that Taymour el-Sobki's comments on a talk show in December would harm the public peace and damage the public interest. He can still appeal the sentence. 
 
 El-Sobky faced a backlash from other TV talk show hosts and civilians who filed complaints to public prosecutors accusing him of insulting Egyptian women. 
 
 Public prosecutors, who have the right to vet such complaints and to choose which ones to pursue, charged el-Sobky and took him to court on these grounds. 
 
 "We can criticize or reject the comments he made, but he did not commit a crime," said prominent rights lawyer Gamal Eid. 
 
 Under President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, authorities have waged crackdowns against Islamists, then left-wing activists and finally against broader dissent. But lately, many activists say harassment and threats have broadened even to people with no connection to politics or activism. 
 
 Artists, writers, and intellectuals have expressed fear over the future of free speech and creativity in Egypt following a two-year sentence handed by an appeals court last month against author Ahmed Naji for violating "public modesty" through publishing an excerpt of his novel containing a sex scene in an Egyptian literary magazine. 
 
 Naji's detention in a Cairo prison following the sentencing hit Egypt's artistic and intellectual community hard as it followed recent sentences handed to the TV presenter and researcher Islam Behery, who is serving a year-long prison sentence for "defaming religious symbols" and the writer Fatma Naoot, who has appealed a three-year sentence for defaming Islam. 
 
 Eid said el-Sobki's case has similar attributes with the expulsion from parliament of Tawfiq Okasha earlier this month as a response to him meeting Israel's ambassador to Egypt. 
 
 "The two issues seem to be unrelated, but they both share the same attribute .... Okasha did not break the law," said Eid. "The two incidents were handled outside the realm of the law." 
 
 The cases, Eid said, are an example of how "it is not the law, but it is pressure and public opinion, and rallying around someone, that acquits or incriminates him." 
 
 "Unfortunately these are not isolated cases," said Eid. "They come in the context of that the state itself violates the law day and night, and implements it haphazardly." ||||| CAIRO (AP) — Egyptian courts have sentenced two singers to prison time for seemingly tame behavior deemed threatening to society in a country growing increasingly repressive on all fronts. 
 
 One, the famous singer Sherine Abdel-Wahab, was given six months over a joke suggesting that the Nile River is polluted, which prosecutors used to accuse her of insulting the state. A fan had asked her to sing one of her popular songs referring to drinking from the river, Egypt's lifeline, to which she playfully suggested that it's safer to drink bottled water. 
 
 The other, little-known Laila Amer, was sentenced to two years for inciting "debauchery and immorality" with a music video in which she plays a downtrodden but belly-dancing housewife complaining to her husband about his bossy mother. The name of the song, "Bos Omak," is a play on words with a popular Arabic profanity. 
 
 The charges, while not uncommon in matters of morality in conservative Egypt, come at a time when free speech in general is under assault by authorities and tolerance for different opinions seems to be reaching an all-time low ahead of next month's presidential election, in which President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi is set to win after other potential candidates were forced out of the race. 
 
 "Fundamentally this is a conservative regime that seeks in part to ground its legitimacy in its ability to defend the country's 'moral code,'" said Timothy Kaldas of the U.S.-based Tahrir Institute. "It reflects a long-term effort to demonstrate it's no less committed to morality than the Islamists it has displaced." 
 
 El-Sissi, who overthrew his divisive Islamist predecessor in 2013, almost certainly will take a second mandate in March given that all serious competitors in the race have been disqualified or intimidated into dropping out. He faces only a single adversary, an obscure politician who supports him and registered at the last minute when it became clear no one else could face el-Sissi. 
 
 Muslim-majority Egypt has steadily grown more conservative over the past half century, although it maintains relatively vibrant arts and music scenes and is far more liberal than Gulf Arab countries. 
 
 Prosecutions for moral issues have grown, however, under el-Sissi's leadership, which has ushered in the country's fiercest crackdown on dissent and freedoms in its modern history. 
 
 In September, authorities arrested dozens of people after several waved an LGBT rainbow flag at a Cairo concert by a popular Lebanese indie rock band whose lead singer is openly gay. The band, Mashrou' Leila, was later banned from performing in Egypt. 
 
 In December, another female singer named Shaimaa Ahmed faced similar charges to Amer over what was deemed racy content, being sentenced to two years in prison, reduced to one year on appeal. Her video showed her dancing in her underwear and suggestively licking an apple and eating a banana before a classroom of young men.
– Watch what you say about the fidelity of the women of Egypt. That's a lesson Taymour el-Sobky is learning the hard way. The blogger, who runs the Facebook page "The Diary of a Suffering Man," has been sentenced to three years in prison with hard labor by a court in Giza, CNN reports. According to the state-run Al-Ahram newspaper, el-Sobky said, "Thirty percent of women have a readiness for immorality ... but cannot find someone to encourage them," while appearing on a TV show in December. A flood of complaints followed the comments, and a public prosecutor charged el-Sobky for "spreading false news," the AP reports. El-Sobky, who says his comments were taken out of context, has apologized. An appeal is scheduled for March 30. Rights lawyer Gamal Eid says el-Sobky's case highlights how public opinion, rather than the rule of law, controls the legal system in Egypt. Whatever one may think of el-Sobky's comments, "he did not commit a crime," Eid says, adding that the "government violates the law day and night, and implements it haphazardly." More often these days, the government is cracking down on artists, writers, and intellectuals, the AP notes. Ahmed Naji, for instance, received two years in prison for violating "public modesty" after an excerpt from his novel that contained a sex scene was published in a literary magazine. Also, a TV presenter is serving a year in prison for "defaming religious symbols," and another writer has appealed a three-year sentence for defaming Islam.