2005-2014

A British journalist held hostage by militants in north-west Pakistan has been freed after spending almost six months in captivity. Asad Qureshi was abducted with two former Pakistani intelligence officers while travelling in the Taliban stronghold of North Waziristan. Local newspapers reported that a ransom of 14m rupees was paid although there was no independent confirmation. Qureshi went...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has expressed concern at an Indonesian Supreme Court ruling against Erwin Arnada, editor of the now-dormant Playboy Indonesia. Arnada faces up to two years in jail after prosecutors said recently that they would enforce a 2009 Supreme Court ruling that found the magazine's editor guilty of public indecency, according to news reports. Defence attorneys...

Unidentified assailants stabbed reporter Adams Ledesma Valenzuela to death in an impoverished neighbourhood in Buenos Aires on Saturday, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported quoting local and international press. Ledesma, 41, a Bolivian-born reporter for the community weekly newspaper Mundo Villa and director of local TV station Mundo Villa, was found stabbed to death around 4...

A prominent opposition journalist is to go on trial for allegedly libelling Egypt's foreign minister in a newspaper, a judicial source said on Sunday. Hamdi Qandeel could face prison or a fine if found guilty of the charge of "insulting and libelling a public servant or citizen performing their work," the source said. Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit filed a complaint against Qandeel alleging...

Police in Kenya said Monday they had arrested a radio journalist on suspicion of links to a bombing in neighbouring Uganda which killed 76 people in July. Habib Suleiman, a presenter on Radio Salaam based in the coastal city of Mombasa, was arrested on Saturday and taken to Nairobi for questioning, regional police chief Leo Nyongesa said. "We have handed him over to the anti-terrorism police unit...

Chinese journalists are increasingly finding themselves the targets of threats and censorship by private-sector companies (and some state companies as well). Several cases with serious implications for press freedom in China have illustrated this privatisation of censorship and violence against journalists in the past few weeks. The phenomenon is not new, but it is tending to grow in an alarming

A year has gone by since Christian Poveda, a French photojournalist, documentary filmmaker and politically-committed observer, was shot dead in a San Salvador suburb on September 2, 2009, probably by members of a local gang. His death has deprived his profession of one of its best-informed specialists in Central America, a region often ignored by the international press. After covering the civil

A man said to be a close ally of President Yahya Jammeh of the Gambia has filed a lawsuit in the United States of America against the US-based online Freedom Newspaper, its editor Pa Nderry M'Bai, and Freedom Newspaper Incorporated, the publishers. Amadou Samba, a businessman and the publisher of pro-government Banjul-based Daily Observer newspaper, is demanding that Freedom Newspaper make public...

A witness in the case of missing editor Vasyl Klymentyev has also gone missing, according to Petro Matvienko, deputy editor-in-chief of Noviy Stil newspaper. Matvienko refused to name the witness in order to avoid compromising the investigation, according to a report released by the UNIAN news agency. He also refused to cite the source for his information but said he had verified it. He said that...

Togo's President, Faure Essozimna Gnassingbé, has filed three more defamation suits against two privately-owned newspapers. Two of the suits were brought against the weekly L'Indépendant Express. This brings to three the number of cases that President Gnassingbé has launched against L'Indépendant Express since August 18. The Media Foundation for West Africa's (MFWA) correspondent in Togo reported...