Lebanese Man Detained over Tweets About President Sleiman

Jean Assy, a 25-year-old web developer from Akkar, was detained for about six hours on Tuesday afternoon following comments he’d made on social networking site Twitter about Lebanese President Michel Sleiman.

Assy, who has been active on Twitter for more than two years under the handle @JeanAssy, told Beirut.com how it all went down:

“I got a call a couple of days ago saying I should go to the Cyber Crime and Intellectual Property Bureau for a copyright issue.

When I got there this morning [Tuesday], they told me it was about my Tweets regarding the president and that they’ve been keeping a file tracking my tweets for more than six months now.”

After word of Assy’s detention spread across the web, peeps in the Twittersphere began circulating the hashtag #FreeJeanAssy. Much speculation revolved around which exact Tweet got him detained, including this one, which Assy wrote on June 11. It says: “If the president spent less money on travel expenses, he could donate instead to an NGO and help eliminate hunger.”

But a look through his timeline shows Assy has said much more controversial things over Twitter in the past few months, including this post and this one as well.

Regardless, Assy tells Beirut.com it wasn’t over any Tweet in particular, but that investigators had a general problem with his words involving President Michel Sleiman.

“I refused to sign a paper that would ban me from talking about Michel Sleiman,” he told Beirut.com after his detention on Tuesday.

However, rather confusingly, what Assy did end up signing, he says, was an agreement that he would not talk about Sleiman “in his position as president” ever again.