Guatemalan Twitterer Arrested

Jean Anleu was so fed up with corruption in his country that he decided to vent on the Internet, sending a 96-character message on the social-networking site Twitter.

That message has now earned him a potential five-year prison sentence and the unfortunate distinction of becoming one of the first people in the world to be arrested for a tweet.

Writing under his Internet alias "jeanfer," Anleu urged depositors to pull their money from Guatemala's rural development bank, whose management has been challenged in a political scandal: "First concrete action should be take cash out of Banrural and bankrupt the bank of the corrupt."

These words illegally undermined public trust in Guatemala's banking system, according to prosecutor Genaro Pacheco. Authorities proved Anleu sent the message by searching his Guatemala City home, and then put him in prison with kidnappers, extortionists and other dangerous criminals for a day and a half before letting him out on bail.

link: Guatemalan fears a tweet will make him a jailbird - washingtonpost.com

Iran: Regime Confiscates Opposition Files

Iranian officials have seized documents and computers from a political party that had backed opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi in the June 12 presidential election, a newspaper reported on Saturday. The reformist Etemad Melli newspaper said "officials inspected the office of Executives of Construction Party in Tehran and took away its documents and computers," without specifying when this took place.

link: AFP: Iran officials seize pro-Mousavi party documents

Iran Bans Fateh from Leaving Country

Parisa Hafezi writes:

Iran has banned an ally of the country's opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi from leaving the Islamic state, the official IRNA news agency reported on Saturday.

Abolfazl Fateh, head of Mousavi's media office, said the ban would not change his political stance, adding he was banned from leaving Iran because of his role in post-election developments.

"Such pressures can not push people like me to change our political stances," he told IRNA. "The imposed ban will not change my political views."

link: Iran bans Mousavi ally from leaving the country | International | Reuters