PARIS, May 17: Jordan’s first woman member of parliament Toujan el-Faisal has apparently become one of the world’s first Cyber-journalists to be sentenced to jail for having “published” an article on the Internet.

Tried on Thursday in Amman before the Jordanian State Security Court for articles published on the Internet that were considered defamatory, Ms El-Faisal was summarily sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment for also having “insulted the country’s legal system in an interview with the Qatari satellite TV network Al-Jazeera in which she denounced the Jordanian prime minister as being “corrupt.” She faced up to three years in prison for the offences.

In announcing the decision by the Jordanian State Security Court, Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF), the Paris-based international journalists’ rights organization, expressed its “outrage” at the sentencing of Ms El-Faisal and called for her to be “freed at once.”

“We are outraged at this decision by the state security court,” writes Robert Menard, Reporters Sans Frontieres secretary-general in a letter to King Abdullah II, “especially since no appeal is possible.” Moreover, he notes, “we cannot accept the imprisonment of someone for simply expressing an opinion on the Internet.”

Menard also noted in his letter to King Abdullah, “the few pockets of freedom in Jordan seem to be shrinking day by day.” Since the beginning of this year, three journalists have been arrested and two weeklies censored. In making public that fact yesterday, Menard had also written that he was “forced to conclude” that “after attacking the written media, the authorities are now bent on attacking the Internet.”