Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI)

The al-Zohour Court of Appeal in Port Said upheld an earlier decision sentencing blogger Tamer Mabrouk to a heavy fine.

Despite the fact that the Network recorded a decline in the number of cases brought against journalists and bloggers in 2008 compared with 2007, the violations that took place in 2008 were more violent.

The Legal Aid Unit for Freedom of Expression won an acquittal for Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, director of the Ibn Khaldoun Center for Development Studies, in a Hisba case brought against him

The blogger has received many phone calls from the State Security officers ordering him to meet with them.

The Arabic Network for Human Rights (ANHRI) reports that the al-Khalifa Court of Appeal issued its ruling to annul the decision to imprison Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim for a term of two years.

On the occasion of the 19th anniversary of Yemen’s Unity Day, Egyptian human rights organizations urged Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh to order the Ministry of Information to stop the siege imposed on Yemeni newspapers and remove the ban on blocked Yemeni websites.

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) said today that it is strongly concerned with the decision of the Syrian Ministry of Culture to confiscate a book entitled “Syria in the Russian flights during the nineteenth century”.

ANHRI is deeply disturbed by ongoing practices hostile to press freedom in Yemen, including the arrest of a journalist and internet activist in Mukalla and the gun attack on another journalist by security forces in the same city.