Reporters Without Borders demonstrates in front of the France's National Assembly

Reporters Without Borders campaigners hung dozens of computer "mice" from railings around the statue of "Law and Justice" in front of the French National Assembly on 10 July to protest at the imprisonment of Tunisian cyber-dissident Zouhair Yahyaoui. Inside the building, visiting Tunisian foreign minister Habib Ben Yahia was conferring with foreign affairs committee chairman Edouard Balladur after an earlier meeting with French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin. The 20 or so militants, along with Yahyaoui's fiancée, unfurled a banner accusing Tunisian President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali of being an "enemy of the Internet" and carried placards demanding Yahyaoui's release. They were joined by the leader of the French Green Party, Noël Mamère (photo), who is a member of parliament and the foreign affairs committee. Another MP, former education and culture minister Jack Lang, sent a message of support. Nadia Hammami (photo), daughter of jailed Tunisian journalist and opposition figure Hamma Hammami and of his lawyer wife Radhia Nasraoui, who is on hunger strike to obtain his release, was at the protest to describe how the family was being harassed by the authorities. Reporters Without Borders wrote to Balladur and De Villepin on 9 July asking them to persuade the Tunisian government to free Yahyaoui. Yahyaoui, founder and editor of the news website TUNeZINE.com, was jailed for a total of 28 months by a Tunis court on 20 June – a year for "putting out false news giving the impression there had been a criminal attack on persons or property" and a year and four months for "theft and unauthorised use of a communications link" and "stealing from his employer." The combined sentence was reduced by the Tunis appeal court on 10 July to two years. His lawyers said the charges arose from a message he had posted on the website under his pseudonym of "Ettounsi" ("Tunisian") reporting a rumour that there had been a failed attack on the presidential palace. His arrest and conviction were also thought to be because he is the nephew of a dissident judge, Mokhtar Yahyaoui. Yahyaoui was arrested on 4 June at a Tunis cybercafé by six plainclothes police, who took him to his home, where they searched his bedroom and seized his computer equipment. While he was being interrogated, he was undressed and tortured three times by being made to hang by his arms with feet barely touching the ground. After the last session of this, he revealed the password to his site, which enabled the authorities to block public access to it from inside Tunisia. Yahyaoui set up the website in July last year to put out news about the fight for democracy and freedom in Tunisia. He published opposition material online and was one of the first people to circulate a letter from his uncle, the judge, to President Ben Ali criticising the country's judiciary. Between 26 and 28 May, TUNeZINE organised an online forum about the 26 May referendum on the Constitution and about the state of the opposition which drew a very large number of participants. Yahyaoui's website is at TUNeZINE