The firm [Yahoo!] says it simply responds to requests from the authorities for data without ever knowing what it will be used for. But this argument no longer holds water. Yahoo! certainly knew it was helping to arrest political dissidents and journalists, not just ordinary criminals.

If nothing is done to ensure the press is free to do its work, these elections will take place in a climate of intimidation. If the government wants the world to say the elections were free, fair and transparent, it should heed our call for a change in attitude. The Media Centre recently set up to monitor and punish the foreign press is utterly illegitimate and should be disbanded.

We are very concerned at where this crackdown could lead, because it is gaining pace in the run-up to the Spring festivities.

This murder once again shows that journalists pay a very high price to report in Iraq. It is absolutely appalling that insurgents use this kind of barbaric violence against people whose job is just to observe and report, and who just carry a notebook and pen.

We fear this 'obstruction of justice' procedure is a judicial device for the government to yet again settle some scores with the privately-owned media and at the same time subject them to state censorship.

This imprisonment is shameful for a country like Poland, which has just joined the European Union and which is the sole member state to impose prison sentences on journalists for offences of opinion.