[WSIS CS-Plenary] More questions on Tunis and freedom of expression

[Liss Jeffrey]

INDEX on Censorship at www.indexonline.org
Index on Censorship - UK
... calls for the United Nations to think again about its choice of Tunis
as the location for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)
scheduled for ...
<http://www.indexonline.org/news/20040707_tunisia.shtml>

[snip]

Tunisia: Clampdown on the internet continues

Brings new meaning to
the phrase ‘web search'

An appeal court has upheld what local and international observers say are 
‘unjustified sentences' handed down to young web users, picked up in a raid 
on a web café in the Tunisian city of Zarzis as they browsed Islamist 
websites . For them the case is just more evidence of the country's 
intransigence on the issue of free expression and the internet – and calls 
into question the UN's plans to host a global summit on information 
technology in Tunis in late 2005.

Tunisia has given a dismissive reply to the international free expression 
community's concern for the fate of a group of young internet users, 
sentenced for supposed terror offences in the southern city of Zarzis .

Despite the close scrutiny of free expression groups including Index on 
Censorship, an appeals court upheld draconian sentences handed down to a 
group of young web users in Zarzis, jailed for "delinquency, theft and 
obtaining material to make bombs" as a result of consulting so-called 
"terrorist" websites. Their lawyer says they have been tortured.

[snip]