Independent Newspapers' IOL Web site was attacked yesterday morning by an activist group lashing out at an article about Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe.
The group, calling itself Anonymous Africa, tweeted that it would attack the news organisation's Web site for "supporting the dictator Mugabe".
This comes after an opinion piece that was published by The Sunday Independent, in which the author comes out in support of Mugabe.
The attack commenced just before 11am and downed Independent Newspapers' Web site and e-mail system.
IOL editor Alastair Otter says he saw the tweets just 10 minutes before the attack. He adds there has been a misconception that the site had been "broken into" and that it is incorrect. "The hackers rather flooded our server with traffic until it stopped, so it wasn't breached or broken into."
Otter says the IOL Web site and e-mail services were restored within two hours. He adds it's not an easy process to track down the attackers. "Generally, they would flood the server from around the world, so it makes it difficult to pinpoint exactly where the source of the attack is coming from."
Anonymous Africa also used Facebook to channel its anger at The Sunday Independent piece, titled "Mugabe hero of African liberation".
"Any response to this human excrement that the IOL is punting we will be launching denial-of-service attacks against IOL (sic)," the group wrote.
Otter says that, as a news organisation with various publications, it is to be expected that some of the opinions published would be popular and some not. "We try to represent as many sides of a story as possible."
Otter says he thinks the attack was narrow-minded. "I really think this attack was not justified and it infringes on freedom of speech."
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