Fergie's Tech Blog

Maldives: Cyber-dissident Mohamed Zaki freed

Via Reporters sans Frontières.

Reporters Without Borders today cautiously welcomed the release of Maldives cyber-dissident Mohamed Zaki, after two years in prison and 19 months under house arrest and called on President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom to send a "positive signal" to the world by freeing other journalists still being detained, including two arrested several days ago.

Zaki, who helped run the e-mailed newsletter Sandhaanu, was freed on 18 August, two months after the release of another Sandhaanu staff member, Fathimath Nisreen. He told Reporters Without Borders he had been freed without conditions attached and that he would not otherwise have agreed to his release. He said he would keep on fighting even if he was thrown in prison again, because "freedom of speech cannot be sacrificed."

He was jailed in January 2002 and then put under house arrest in January 2004 because he was partially paralysed by a back problem.

posted by Fergie @ 8/23/2005 12:15:00 PM