Hassan Nobakhtian, the editor of conservative website Nosaki, was arrested on 25 February, despite having had no complaints brought against him.
The arrest took place 11 days after Nosaki was banned by Tehran prosecutor-general Said Mortazavi.
Nosaki is one of five websites that have been banned in the government’s crackdown on the Internet during the tense run up to the 14 March parliamentary elections. Paradoxically, the websites banned were critical of reform, and not of the government. Authorities claim that the websites were banned for, “poisoning the electoral environment”.
