Saudi Arabia's most popular blogger, Fouad al-Farhan, has been detained for questioning, an Interior Ministry spokesman confirmed. It was the first known arrest of an online critic in the kingdom, though the Saudi government has waged an all-out battle against "internet treason" for some years. It operates some of the world's most sophisticated information technology to block dozens of web sites.
Farhan, 32, who used his blog to criticize corruption and call for political reform, was detained "for violating rules not related to state security," according to the spokesman, Maj. Gen. Mansour al-Turki, responding to repeated requests for comment with a brief cellphone text message.
Farhan went to considerable trouble to thank the hundreds of people throughout the world who had shown interest in his plight.
He said: "My government put me in a solitary confinement for 137 days. My cell was 2 --- 3 meters. I never saw anybody except the interrogators once every couple of weeks. The rest of the days I was alone. They didn ' t allow me to watch T.V, listen to radio, read any books or magazine or newspaper. I was not allowed to have a pen and a paper to write. I never saw the sun. I was completely cut off the world. All I had is our holy book (Quran) and prayer rug. So, I had a lot of time to think about my life."
In Iraq, which the U.S. is fond of saying that it has "made safe for democracy," a 33-year-old
female blogger, a medical doctor, was arrested, imprisoned and subjected to torture because of her writing on a blog.
The Iraqi Government, which had previously denied the existence of Dr. Hanan Al-Mashhadani (aka Hiba Al-Shammari), finally allowed a telephone conversation between her and her lawyer, Karim Ahmed Al-Asadi.
The charges revolve around the "Terrorism Act" -" an act that has been known to take the shape and form of its implementing parties. They include:
Supporting terrorism through written articles described as "confidential"; encouraging terrorist attacks on police and army by terrorist elements; p rejudicing symbolic national and religious figures; impersonating the character of an existing Iraqi writer (although they have not disclosed who that writer might be).
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