Crackdown on reformist websites: round-up

Here is a round-up to the serious crackdown on a few Iranian reformist websites:

For the past few months, some judiciary officials in Iran have shown ultimate determination to shut down two reformist news websites, Emrooz and Rouydad.

First they officially ordered the Telecom company to filter them, then after a few months, since the websites hadn't stopped operating, they stormed their ISPs and arrested some technicians helping them.

Later, they arrested a few young journalists somehow related to the websites (among them two well-known bloggers, Babak and Shahram).

Last week they arrested the father of Sina Motallebi, well-known Iranian blogger who was himself arrested last year for three weeks which created a big splash both in the blogosphere and the mainstream press. After a few months, he fled to Netherlands where he started to write about his horrible situation in detention and described the ugly interrogation methods used by Iranian secret police and judiciary agents in great detail.

It's said that Saaed Mortazavi, the same judiciary officials who has allegedly been directly involved in the death of Canadian photographer, Zahra Kazemi, is leading all this crackdown. It was also him who first ordered to filter the two reformist websites last year.

Meanwhile, the results of a recent poll show that internet is the most trusted medium among Iranians.

Update:

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