Turkish authorities have arrested 32 members of the hacking group Anonymous according to the country’s state news agency.
The suspects were arrested in a dozen cities, including Istanbul and Turkey’s capital, Ankara, according to a press release (in Turkish) from the Anadolu Agency.
The arrests stem from Anonymous’ attacks against some Turkish government sites on Thursday, when the group brought down two well known Turkish sites in a protest against Internet censorship. The Turkish government previously announced its intentions to require ISPs to implement a series of filters by August 22.
The latest arrests come on the heels of Friday’s news that three of the controversial group’s leaders were arrested in Spain in connection with the recent cyber attacks on Sony and other governments and websites. A 16 year-old Dutch youth was taken into custody in December, 2010, for participating in Anonymous-led attacks against Mastercard and Visa over those organizations’ decision to stop processing donations to Wikileaks.
In response to Friday’s arrest, hackers were able to temporarily knock Spain’s national police site offline over the weekend according to a BBC report early Monday.
