According to Iranian news website Mashregh, Hossein Derakhshan, known as Iran's "blogfather" has been released on a bail of $1.5 million after 26 months in prison. Derakhshan had received a 19-and-a-half year prison sentence, with charges including...
Iranian authorities have sentenced a web designer to death for allegedly creating a pornographic website. Canadian resident Saeed Malekpour, 35, was convicted of "designing and moderating adult content websites," "agitation against the regime" in...
Lawyers in Rome, Madrid, Paris, The Hague and Berlin will today protest against the wrongful imprisonment of their colleagues in Iran. On this the International Day of the Endangered Lawyer, Iranian Embassies will be presented with a letter of...
Reading The Economist's Bagehot blog, earlier this week its writer's dismissal of Britain’s student protests with “The revolution will be along later” was resonant of the final analysis many made of Iran’s “Green” movement: despite the...
For months in advance of Sunday’s parliamentary elections, Egyptian officials waged a rather strident campaign to fend off calls to allow international election monitors to observe the vote. The issue, they said, was out of the question and an...
Parliamentary elections are Sunday in Egypt, so here’s a heavily Egypt-centric collection of related links, plus some other happenings around the region In advance of parliamentary elections in Egypt, the regime is cracking down on opposition...
Index on Censorship today launches Iran Uncut, a special initiative to unearth and revitalise the plethora of archives of literary, artistic, photographic and other creative works by Iranians denied publication and expression in their homeland. Pen...
An arrest warrant has been issued for the son of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Mehdi Hashemi, whose father is an influential cleric and former president known for his opposition to President Mahmound Ahmadinejad, has been living in Britain since last...
It started out as a routine night on the Egyptian parliamentary campaign trail, and ended as a clear lesson in the methods that a police state uses to control, intimidate and generally confuse journalists. Along with several colleagues, I traveled...
The Muslim Brotherhood has said that more than 1,000 of its members and eight of its candidates have been arrested ahead of next week's parliamentary elections. Over recent days the group's supporters have clashed with security forces in several...