The U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists has urged Saudi Arabia to free a blogger who has been locked up for almost a month.

Fouad al-Farhan has been jailed after writing articles about political prisoners in Saudi Arabia on his Website, www.alfarhan.org.

The government has refused to say why they are holding al-Farhan, other than it was not under suspicion that he was a terrorist. The CPJ said that al-Farhan's imprisonment was counter to official Saudi statements in support of reform and a more open press.

In an e-mail from Farhan he claimed that Saudi authorities thought he was running "an online campaign promoting the political prisoners' issue."