Although only the law can restrict freedom of information under the Lithuanian Constitution, the government resolution placed restrictions on the Web-based distribution of information advocating terrorism and inciting ethnic and religious hatred.
In June 2003, Lithuania's state security service told Elneta, the company hosting Kavkaz center, to close it. When director-general Rimantas Pasys refused to do so, the officers disconnected the server, and criminal proceedings were launched against him.
In March 2004, a Vilnius court suspended hearings into the case and asked the Constitutional Court to rule on whether the governmental resolution was anti-constitutional or not.
Independent experts on Islam summoned to court said the information distributed through Kavkaz center, which is now operating again in Lithuania despite Russian demands to see it closed down, could be connected to terrorist propaganda, and the incitement of ethnic and religious hatred.
A district court in Vilnius, the capital of this Baltic republic, will now make the final ruling on the case.
