Committee to Protect Bloggers

AFP reports that blogger Karim el-Beheiri, one of the Egyptian food protest bloggers, has been released from prison. He and other protesters, including several bloggers, were arrested on April 6, in the Nile Delta city of Manhalla, after engaging in a protest against increased bread prices, a protest largely arranged via Facebook. The detention, as […]

Human Rights Watch (via Sokari on our CPB Facebook Causes page) gives an account of another beating by Egyptian police. (I wish I had more time, or help, to do more original reporting on these issues, but, well, I don’t, so with apologies to HRW, I’m posting an edited version of their report.)
Ahmed Maher Ibrahim, […]

According to Amir Mizroch, news editor of the Jerusalem Post, on his blog, Forecast Highs, an Israeli soldier was arrested for uploading a photo onto Facebook
A soldier serving in the IDF’s elite 8200 military intelligence unit was sentenced to 19 days in prison on Wednesday for uploading a picture onto the Facebook social networking site.
The […]

There are three ways to get additional information on threatened bloggers and threats to bloggers from the Committee to Protect Bloggers. Sometimes there are stories that we don’t write up as separate posts but provide context or depth to your picture of the state of free speech for bloggers worldwide. These vehicles will give you […]

Update: RSF also reports that Fouad is free.
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Global Voices asserts that Fouad Mourtada has been released from prison with a “full royal pardon.” If this is true, it’s fantastic news for Fouad. Not great news for free speech or Morocco, though, that it took a royal pardon. Can anyone confirm this?
Mourtada was sentenced to three […]

Subsequent to her conversation with us, Wall Street Journal reporter Vauhini Vara succeeded in getting a response, of sorts, from Facebook. She asked the company whether they had turned over information to the Moroccan security forces on the identity of their former user Fouad Mourtada. Mourtada was sentenced to three years in prison for creating […]

Update: Facebook responds. Kind of.
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Update: RSF is trying to find out how Moroccan prosecutors determined Mourtada’s indentity.
Reporters Without Borders wonders how the police identified Mourtada. “Did the police get his computer’s IP address? And if so, how? We have asked the ISP, Maroc Telecom, in which the French company Vivendi is a shareholder, to […]

Click here to listen to The World’s Tech Podcast featuring the Committee to Protect Bloggers.
Clark Boyd, technology reporter for Public Radio International’s radio program The World, interviewed us today for their Tech Podcast. We’ll be checking in regularly with Clark on the podcast to talk about threats to bloggers and threatened bloggers around the world.
This […]

Update: RSF reports that Fouad has already been sentenced to three years in prison for his satirical Facebook page!
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I’m overwrought today, but I need to make time for this. So, with apologies, I’m just going to rip off Carolyn O’Hara’s post from Passport.

Because you are liable to be arrested, blindfolded, harshly interrogated, spat upon, and […]

Via IFEX:
On 10 January 2008, the prosecutor general of Bekaa arrested four students at Saint Joseph University (USJ) in Zahleh (eastern Lebanon) on charges of slander, libel and public insult following conversations between them on a Facebook webpage that were deemed inappropriate by one of their colleagues who pressed charges against them.
Does anyone have more […]