Tunisia Arrests 20 for Browsing Islamist Web Sites
Tue Feb 18, 8:39 AM ET

TUNIS (Reuters) - Tunisia has arrested 20 men for browsing radical Islamist Web Sites, human rights groups said on Tuesday.

The North African country tightly controls the media and jailed its first "Internet dissident" last year for disseminating "false information" on the Web, activists say.

"The 20 men, aged 18-22 and most of them high-school students, were arrested on February 5-9 in Zarzis for entering banned Internet Web Sites," said the Tunisian Human Rights League, the country's only legal independent rights group.

The government has made no statement on the arrests in the coastal city, 380 km (240 miles) from Tunis, and officials were not immediately available for comment.

Rights groups say the government has set up a cyber-police special force to track down dissident activity on the Internet.

The unauthorized International Association for Support of Political Prisoners said Tuesday police were interrogating the men still and refusing family visits.

Lawyers, who asked not to be named, said authorities were worried the 20 could belong to nascent radical Islamist cells.

They said the arrested men browsed sites including one from the banned Tunisian Islamist Nahda party.

The New York-based Committee to protect Journalists, which seeks to safeguard press freedom, named Tunisia in 2001 as one of the "Ten Worst Enemies of the Press."