The Iranian State announced last Saturday that it is forming a new twelve person strong police unit reporting to the Iranian chief prosecutor to suppress Internet dissidence. The new unit is to be headed by Colonel Mehrdad Omidi, who outlined his mission as going after “insults and spreading of lies” and promised to treat cyber-crime “as seriously as armed robbery”. Critics claim that this is an attempt to censor such well-known sites as Kalemeh and Tagheer which have been used as mediums for opposition politicians.

This is the latest stage in a general clampdown on freedom of expression in response to the mass protests following the controversial presidential election in June. Access to the internet is already restricted in Iran, where an estimated ten million websites have been blocked for being judged “socially or politically offensive”.  There is currently a registration system in force for bloggers, many of whom have suffered arrest and imprisonment for their blogging activities. Back in 2006 the Iranian government also banned high speed broadband internet for home users in order to prevent the downloading of western films and pornographic material.

The formation of this new squad is a further blow to the Iranian blogging community. In the recent Reporters Sans Frontiers press freedom index, Iran scored an extremely low 172 out of 175. It was described as one of the world’s 13 worst internet “black holes”.