A year ago Sina was arrested on this day

Last year on this day Sina Motallebi, a blogger friend of mine, was arrested -- on his 30th birthday. The news shook and shocked the blogosphere, making it to the first place at the Blogdex list of most popular links.

After three weeks of intense pressure by the blogosphere and hence the mainstream media, he went out of jail on a condition: to remain silent, no matter what happens.

During the next couple of months he was under such psychological pressure by the judiciary's intelligence officials that he was even afraid of being mentioned anywhere -- in fact, he had asked me a couple of times, by sending secret Yahoo emails, to remove the posts on my Persian blog where I had mentioned his name, or at least remove his name from it.

As a career journalist and a blogger, he was not allowed to write anything, anywhere unless it be a sort of regretful piece, dismissing his own thoughts and deeds as a reformist journalist. He suffered about 10 months until he secretly decided to leave Iran with his family for good.

Now, in a small city in Netherlands, he is learning a whole new language and culture, and experiencing a completely new thing: freedom of speech