So far, the outcry has been mostly in tech circles and non-English sites. On Manal and Alaa's bucket, Manal writes:

Alaa and the rest of the group that was kidnapped yesterday, will be detained for 15 days. They didnt go directly to the prison as we thought, but spent the night at the Khalifa's police station and are supposed to be transferred to the prisons now. The 3 women will go to El Qanater prison, as Tora prison where the rest of the 40 detainees are held has no section for women, and the men are supposed to join the rest and go to Tora prison, but some think that they will also taken to El Qanater prison (which has sections for both men and women).

They renewed 15 more days to the detainees of 24th of April, today. They are not releasing them anytime soon.

From prison, Alaa writes:

Today it hit me, I am really in prison. I'm not sure how I feel. I thought I was OK but I took forever to wake up. The way fellow prisoners look at me tells me I do not feel well but I can't really feel it.

I'd say prison is not like I expected, but I had no expectations. No images, not even fears, nothing. Guess it will take time. I expect to spend no less than a month here. I'm sure that's enough time to see all the ugly sides of prison, to be genuinely depressed....

...Still I am writing this in English to prevent my cellmates from reading over my shoulders, not that I am sure this will work. They are all educated and some are very knowledgeable, in the span of two days we discussed everything, from Egyptology to biology to economics, lots of politics tab3an. I have to defend Kefaya and all the different movements, I have to explain about the judges and I have to explain why I'm here, why it's worth it, and to be frank I've no idea why. It isn't worth being away from Manal for three days let alone 30 (mashy ya masr) but I can't really say that, can I ?

I know it's not easy to get worked up over yet another blogger who's been arrested by an oppressive regime. But Egypt is supposedly an ally, supposedly a democracy, right?

More from the Guardian. Here's a small but hopefully growing Frappr map of support for Alaa. And more from Global Voices and Slashdot.

Via vlado, Ayman, and Gunnar, who note that Alaa is a Drupal contributor, too.

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