7 Aug 2009 | Digital Freedom, Index Index, minipost
Max Kelly, chief security officer at Facebook, told technology website CNET News that denial-of-service internet attacks which disrupted Twitter, Facebook and Live Journal services yesterday were targeted specifically at a Georgian blogger known as Cyxymu. “It was a simultaneous attack targeting him to keep his voice from being heard,” he told the website. The blogger has told the Guardian that he blames the attack on the Kremlin. Today marks one year since the war between Russia and Georgia over the South Ossetia region. Read more here
7 Aug 2009 | Index Index, Middle East and North Africa, minipost
Iranian authorities have shut down the Association of Iranian Journalists, when armed men raided and sealed the Tehran offices. Five journalists have been released in the past week including: Massoud Kurdpour, who just completed a one year jail term, Ali-Reza Beheshti, editor-in-chief of Kalameh Sabz and Kambiz Nouroozi, and director of legal affairs at the Association of Iranian Journalists. CPJ has also confirmed the arrest of Fatima Khavari, director of the weekly newspaper Chragh and Omid Selimi, a photographer who worked for Nesf e Jehan newspaper in Esfahan. Read more here
7 Aug 2009 | Index Index, minipost
Guo Quan, the founder of the China New Democracy Party will plead not guilty when he stands trial today for subversion against the state according to his lawyer. The trial comes amid reports of numerous detentions and trials of dissidents, alongside an apparent crackdown on activist lawyers possibly to stifle dissent ahead of the 60th anniversary of the Communist state’s founding in October. Read more here
7 Aug 2009 | Index Index, minipost
A Russian court in Moscow refused a request from the family of Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya to halt a retrial of three men accused of being accomplices in her murder. Lawyers for the family of Politkovskaya, who was gunned down outside her apartment in 2006, had asked for the case to be returned to prosecutors and merged with an investigation into the mastermind behind the murder. The trial will resume in September. Read more here
