The United States-based alternative news website YellowTimes has been shut down by their hosting company VortechHosting for publishing "graphic material" related to the o­ngoing war in Iraq.

In an e-mail to malaysiakini o­n Tuesday, its publisher Erich Marquardt said the website was shut down briefly yesterday but was restored when the photographs in question were removed.

"The content they were referring to were any pictures of wounded or deceased bodies of civilians or US soldiers in Iraq," he explained.

However, Marquardt said a another e-mail was received from the company later, which read: "As no TV station in the US is allowing any dead US soldiers or POWs to be displayed, we will not either."

"Of course, this statement is patently false. Images of both POWs and dead US soldiers were all over the TV as well as the newspapers," said Marquardt.

Following this, he added that YellowTimes.org was shut down again " for good".

Grave implications

"This is a clear case of censorship. They have admitted so themselves.

"This censorship of YellowTimes raises grave implications for the future of media in the United States," said the publisher, who added that he hopes the website will be up and running in a few days.

In the meantime, Marquardt said readers can contact YellowTimes at their emergency e-mail address: yellowtimes@hotmail.com.

Last month, the website - noted for its highly critical views against the US administration, especially regarding its Iraq campaign - was forced to go offline when it came under intense hacker attacks.

Marquardt had claimed that the attacks were politically motivated and could have been linked to an article by Imad Khadduri which was published o­n the website.

Imadi - a former nuclear scientist who was instrumental in Iraq's nuclear weapons programme in the 1980s and early 1990s - had dismissed allegations concerning the competence and progress of the Iraqi nuclear weapons programme as baseless and untrue.

Malaysiakini has a content exchange agreement with YellowTimes .