Sri Lankan police arrest editor of website critical of government

By The Associated Press | Yahoo! News
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Sri Lankan police say they have arrested the editor of a news website critical of the government, a move a media rights group said is intended to intimidate independent journalists.

Police spokesman Prishantha Jayakody says Bennett Rupasinghe, the editor of LankaeNews.com, was arrested Thursday following a complaint that he had threatened a man by telephone.

Sunil Jayasekara, convener of the group Free Media Movement, says the arrest was made on questionable grounds and is an attempt to silence dissenting media.

A columnist for the website has been missing for more than a year, and its office was set on fire earlier this year.

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