Chris Barna’s Weblog

Today is Free Mojtaba and Arash day. Set up by the Committe to Protect Bloggers, Free Mojtaba and Arash day was set up to raise awareness about Mojtaba Saminejad and Arash Sigarchi, two Iranian bloggers being detained by the Iranian government.

Arash Sigarchi of Panhjareh Eltehab was arrested on January 17th. He has been denied the right to see a lawyer and his bail has been set at about $25,000 U.S. (200 million rials). He has spoken out against recent arrests of bloggers and cyberjournalists.

Mojtaba Saminejad was freed one bail at the end of January. He was arrested again on February 12th with a doubled bail, 1 billion rials. While in jail, Mojtaba’s blog url was transfered to a group of hackers linked to the radical movement, Hezbollah.

Please do anything you can to support this cause. Consider donating the Committee to Protect Bloggers and let your voice be heard. More contact information can be found here.

Update: Arash has been convicted and sentenced on charges ranging from espionage to insulting the country’s leaders(?). This is very sad news indeed.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 22nd, 2005 at 7:37 pm and is filed under News, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.