On recent bad news about Iranian 'bloggers'

I reluctantly have to make a few points about the recent developments regarding the Iranian journalists and internet activists:

• It's sad to see Iranian young journalists arrested and convicted for their journalistic activates.

• I haven't seen any evidence that Arash, Mojataba, and a few others have been convicted for their blog entries. With a few dozen readers, they were hardly popular enough to threaten the regime via their weblogs. Neither had they disclosed classified information or documents. There are thousands of Persian blogs with relatively the same popularity containing equally harsh criticism of the regime and none of them have been communed or arrested yet.

• Arash is charged with working with Radio Farda, which Iran considers a propaganda outlet made by US government to topple the Iranian regime. National security council of Iran has apparently forbidden Iranian journalists and analysts, with a few exceptions such as Sadegh Zibakalam, to work or interview with Radio Farda and other radical anti-regime media outlets.

• Most of the recently convicted 'bloggers' have been prosecuted in courts out of Tehran. We should not forget that there are a lot of judges in these smaller judiciary centers who are willing to show themselves to higher officials so they can move to higher positions. They deliberately create controversy by their judgments to get some attention. As usual, many of their decisions will be reversed in appeal courts.

• Documents show that Arash's charges are about 'spying for the Americans' rather than his posts in his blog.

• It's unfortunate that Iranian regime defines 'spying' so vaguely and widely. It's not clear when an information exchange is considered spying. All of us, bloggers, who are writing about Iran in English, could be seen as spies. However, no blogger has been arrested for publishing news and opinion about Iran in English or other languages.

• Seems to me that some radical anti-regime groups are using blogs as covers for their members or sympathizers in Iran so if something happens to them, it would give them some safety and publicity in the Western media, especially because many of these of group do not have a good reputation among Western journalists and politicians and a journalistic or blogging cover can give members of these groups a much more positive image.

• After about a dozen Internet journalists and activists were released last month, no one has been arrested by the same or any other court in Tehran. Even though many of them spoke out about their horrible time in detention, they are all back to their normal lives. Omid Memarian, who had a blog before arrest, is now back blogging at his own newly designed website; Hanif Mazroui and Fereshteh Ghazi who didn't have blogs when arrested now are blogging.