Jordan 'suppressing free speech'

25 April 2012 Last updated at 07:30 ET

The Jordanian authorities are violating people's right to free speech and undermining the credibility of reform efforts, a human rights group has said.

Human Rights Watch said a journalist and the publisher of the Gerasa News website had been charged with "subverting the system of government".

The charges related to an article about King Abdullah's alleged intervention in a corruption investigation, it added.

HRW said the case was the fifth such incident in Arab kingdom this year.

Sahar al-Muhtasab and her brother Jamal al-Muhtasab, who both worked for Gerasa News, had been charged on 23 April, a statement said.

They had both worked on an article that quoted a member of parliament as saying King Abdullah had issued instructions to members of a parliamentary committee not to refer a former minister to court on corruption charges.

Ms Muhtasab told HRW that a military prosecutor at the State Security Court had insisted King Abdullah was at the forefront of the fight against corruption, and that it was forbidden to imply otherwise.

Jordan cannot claim to be making democratic reforms while prosecutors hunt down journalists doing their job

The prosecutor charged them both with "subverting the system of government in the kingdom", a crime that article 149 of Jordan's penal code punishes with hard labour.

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Jordan 'suppressing free speech'