At 06:37 this morning it was reported to us that search warrants had been obtained by Bristol Transport Police CID directed against members of Bristol indymedia, and that the police were heading to seize the Bristol-imc server.

This action by the police followed contacts by them to several members of the collective by phone and email, threatening to use search warrants.

Their avowed interest is in an article which appeared to report on someone throwing/dropping bricks onto cars from freight trains. The article is apparently far from clear as to what exactly happened, and is now inaccessible.

A former collective member called Mark D Watson (who uses the on-line name “Zaskar”), who was last year expelled from BIMC for abusive/sexist/disruptive behaviour, stated in a comment to the article that he had contacted the police. It appears he may have given them some names and phone numbers and some (false) information about the server functionality.

Bearing in mind the FBI seizure of indymedia servers last year just two weeks before the European Social Forum, and the fact that the G8 is itself just 2 weeks away, some people are of the opinion that the police investigation may be spurious, and that this is more to do with the disruption of the independent media centre network just prior to very important news events.

As yet Bristol indymedia is still off-air.

We will keep you posted on developments, and encourage anyone with further information to post it, because state authorities function best under cover of dark. Let’s shine a bright and piercing light on this further abuse of media freedom!