Alternative news website YellowTimes.org is back in business after its was forced to go offline for reasons which its publisher Erich Marquardt believed were political in nature.

In an e-mail communique to malaysiakini recently, Marquardt said the US-based website was offered to be hosted by an American provider, cihost.com.

"So now we are o­n a good system with a provider that understands what our website is all about," he said.

Last month, the website - which featured articles highly critical of President George W Bush administration especially regarding its campaign in Iraq - was shut down by their hosting company for publishing 'graphic material'.

Marquardt said then that his website was shut down briefly 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.

Censorship

However, the publisher said a another e-mail was received later from the hosting company, Vortech Hosting, 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, who described it as a clear case of censorship.

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

In February, the website 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.

Imad - 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 .