That first victim was Omid Reza Mirsayafi, a 29-year-old Iranian blogger and journalist who wrote largely about music and culture. (In 2003, Iran also became the first nation in the world to imprison a blogger.)

Just last month, a new group was founded jointly by a Bahraini, an Iranian and an American as a way to fight against these types of injustices being carried out by authoritarian regimes all over the world.

Recently, the March 18th Movement introduced its first Internet video as a way to help others around the globe learn about Mirsayafi and put pressure on foreign governments to stop these abhorrent policies of oppression.

However, with recent turmoil in Iran, including limits and blockage of mobile service by the Iranian government in the wake of the recent elections, the South African newspaper The Times reported that the operator stood to lose one month’s worth of revenue given the recent outages.

According to the paper, that would be roughly €9 million.

MTN Irancell has over 16 million Iranian customers and covers 62 percent of the territory.

But today, a company spokesperson denied that MTN has been blocking service.

“MTN network is running in Iran and there is nothing wrong with it,” MTN Group spokeswoman Nozipho Januray-Bardill told Reuters.

No word yet on how MTN’s performance and stance with respect to Iran will affect its pending merger with Indian mobile giant Bharti.

There’s a four-way election currently going on between the two main conservative candidates, including incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mohsen Rezaei, and the two reformist candidates, Mehdi Karroubi, and former prime minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi (pictured).

Two weeks ago, Global Voices posted on the various channels of Ahmadinejad’s online support, including a new website, a Twitter account, and a Facebook page. Not surprisingly, the other candidates also have similar types of online media at their disposal.

However, yesterday, Iran blocked access to Facebook as a way to shut down their political rivals online.

The Washington Post reports:

“We used Facebook to be in direct contact with the voters,” said Saleh Behesti, 22, an industrial design student who helped organize the Internet campaign of Mir Hossein Mousavi, who has mounted the most serious challenge to Ahmadinejad.

“We had 6,000 people on Facebook sending information on Mousavi’s speeches and meetings out to all their friends,” Behesti said. On Saturday, 20,000 people turned out for a Mousavi campaign rally in a Tehran stadium. “Without Facebook we would have never been able to gather so many people,” Behesti said.

Meanwhile, in a news conference today, President Ahmadinejad told CNN that he was not responsible for the ban and that he would “make an inquiry.”

Not surprisingly, the reformists are pretty upset, as they stand the most to gain from a Facebook campaign.

As Reuters notes:

Websites like Facebook have become an important campaign instrument for moderate candidates, particularly former premier Mirhossein Mousavi, who want to mobilize Iranian youth to vote out Ahmadinejad.

One Facebook page campaigning for Mousavi had more than 5,200 members.

Iran’s judiciary said last year more than five million websites were being blocked by authorities since they “inflict social, political, economic and moral damage, which is worrying.”

More than 150,000 of Iran’s population are Facebook members and young voters make up a huge bloc — which helped former reformist president Mohammad Khatami to win the election in 1997 and 2001. Khatami backs Mousavi’s candidacy.