p2pnet - rss feed: Libyan online reporter jailed
p2p news / p2pnet: On the heels of news that Egypt has arrested a blogger for publishing anti-government articles, a Libyan online reporter is in jail for 18 months for the same thing, says his family.
"The sentence is an apparent attempt by the government to silence free speech and dissenting views," says Human Rights Watch.
Abd al-Raziq al-Mansuri was held incommunicado for more than four months before a court in Tripoli on October 19 convicted him of illegally possessing a handgun.
But, “The gun charges are a ruse,” says Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “The authorities went after al-Mansuri because they did not like what he wrote.”
Aal-Mansuri, 52, who contributed to Akhbar-Libya, was arrested in his home own of Tobruk on January 12. On October 27, his family wrote to the Libyan government and local and international media and human rights organizations denouncing the arrest and sentence, says Human Rights Watch, going on:
"Because the Libyan government strictly controls the media, the Internet has become an important source of independent news for Libyans. Dozens of websites based abroad provide a forum for open debate.
"Human Rights Watch visited al-Mansuri on May 5 in Tripoli’s Abu Selim prison. He said then that the Internal Security Agency agents who arrested him had confiscated his computer, papers, floppy and compact discs.
"At the Internal Security Agency’s headquarters in Tobruk, al-Mansuri was questioned about articles he had written, he said. They searched his home the next day, and found an old pistol that belonged to his father. In May, he told Human Rights Watch that he was still unaware of any formal charges against him, and he had not had contact with a lawyer or his family.
"The Libyan authorities have not responded to Human Rights Watch requests for additional information about the case."
Al-Mansuri, "was not arrested for an article, or the Internet, or the radio,” Libyan Internal Security Agency head colonel Tuhami Khaled told Human Rights Watch in May. “He was arrested because he had a gun without a license.”
Internal Security, and not the police, was holding al-Mansuri because a weapon is, “a job for internal security.”
However, "The letter from al-Mansuri’s family insists that his arrest resulted from his journalistic work," says Human Rights Watch. "A brother who spoke with security agents said they told him that al-Mansuri had confessed to his crime, ‘writing articles online that criticized the state of Libya’.
Agents had, "found the old pistol, the family said, during a second search of the home that took place after al-Mansuri’s arrest. His family had no contact with him until he called them on May 28, the day the Internal Security Agency transferred him to the custody of the public prosecutor.
"The trial began in late summer, the family said, but was twice postponed. First, al-Mansuri’s lawyer asked for an extension to prepare a defense. Then, the court postponed the trial because al-Mansuri was hospitalized for a broken pelvis he sustained after falling from his top bunk in prison.
"On October 19, a Tripoli court sentenced al-Mansuri to one-and-a-half years in prison. According to the family, the court refused to give him credit for the four months of incommunicado detention by the Internal Security Agency.
"His family said Libyan authorities have asked them to denounce al-Mansuri as mentally deranged. ‘If defending the right to free speech and asking for basic human rights is insane in our country, then welcome to a family that is, from its oldest to its youngest, insane,’ their letter said."
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See:-
anti-government - Egyptian blogger missing, November 4, 2005
Human Rights Watch - Egyptian Blogger taken in Detention, November 3, 2005
handgun - Jailed Libyan Net writer, August 18, 2005
