Brazilian journalist José Cristian Góes has been sentenced to more than seven months in prison for posting a fictional blog item that mocked corrupt practices.
His piece, "Me, the colonel inside me," lampooned the clientelist methods used by people in positions of power and influence (known in Brazilian slang as "colonels"). His story was told in the first person by an imaginary colonel and did not identify any person.
But it prompted Edson Ulisses, a high court judge, to launch civil and criminal proceedings against Góes, claiming that the story defamed both him and his brother-in-law, state governor Marcelo Dedá.
The Paris-based press freedom watchdog, Reporters Without Borders, described the jail sentence as "judicial insanity that insults the basic principles of the 1988 democratic constitution."
Góes is expected to appeal.
Source: RSF
