Reporters Without Border condemns mistreatment of cyberjournalists and webloggers

Reporters Without Borders has condemned the mistreatment in prison of cyberdissidents and webloggers after an Iranian committee report concluded that public confessions of two of them, Omid Memarian (photo right) and Rozbeh Mir Ebrahimi (photo left), were obtained under duress.

"We fear that the authorities are succeeding in purging the web of all critical content through brutality, intimidation and censorship," the worldwide press freedom organisation said. "In a country in which weblogs and news sites have flourished in the past few years such a setback would be a catastrophe for freedom of expression."

Confirmation that Memarian and Mir Ebrahimi were mistreated after their arrests in November 2004, along with a group of other online journalist, was given on 4 January 2005 in a report from the committee for Monitoring the Implementation of the Constitution, on which both conservatives and reformists sit.

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