Jordan: News office raided

21 Apr 11 | Index Index, Middle East and North Africa, minipost

Six men raided the office of a news website, Al-Muharrir, in Amman on 19 April. Unidentified men broke into the personal office of editor-in-chief Jihad Abu Baidar and threatened to kill him if he did not withdraw a report criticising the country’s Anti-Corruption Commission. Baidar subsequently filed a police complaint. A number of journalists staged a sit-in at the Jordan Press Association premises to protest the incident.

Jordan: Top news site disabled by hackers

09 Feb 11 | Index Index, Middle East and North Africa, minipost

Jordan’s most visited news website, Ammonnews, was frozen by hackers for several hours on Monday. The cyber attack came a day after the website had published a statement critical of the government by representatives of 36 major tribes. The website’s chief editor Basel Okoor blamed state intelligence services for the disruption saying, “Only the Jordanian security services have the technical capacity to do this”. Government officials dismissed the charges and maintained that they had no hand in disabling the website.

Jordanian court bans reporting of corruption trial

17 Mar 10 | Index Index, Middle East and North Africa, minipost, Uncategorized

A media ban on a corruption trial involving several leading Jordanian figures and the former Minister of Finance has been issued by a military court in Amman. The case, involving the Jordan Petroleum Refinery Company, first came to light after revelations in the media. Now only reports personally approved by Attorney General Yousef Faouri may be published, in order, court officers claimed, to allow the judicial authorities to work calmly on the case.

Microsoft Bing filters gay and lesbian search terms

17 Mar 10 | Index Index, Middle East and North Africa, minipost, Uncategorized

A recent report by the OpenNet Initiative has revealed that search terms in both Arabic and English relating to homosexuality are censored in some Middle Eastern countries. The study showed that the level of censorship on Microsoft’s Bing ranged from ‘substantial’ to ‘pervasive’ and ‘selective’ in Algeria, Syria, Jordan and United Arab Emirates. Other sexually explicit search terms were also found to be censored.