2005-2014

Faramaz Novruzoglu (Allahverdiyev), editor and head consultant for Nota newspaper, has received anonymous death threats. The IRFS Institute for Reporter Freedom and Safety (IRFS) informed by Novruzoglu that unknown individuals called him and threatened him and his family members. Novruzoglu believes that these calls are related to his recent series of articles about the Antiterrorism Centre of the...

On February 27, an Accra High Court exonerated Western Publications Limited, publishers of the Accra-based privately-owned Daily Guide newspaper, on libel charges brought against it by Ghana's Foreign Minister, Alhaji Mohammed Mumuni. The court, presided over by Justice KA Acquaye, awarded 1,000 GH Cedis (approx US$800) each in favour of the defendants, the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA)...

The International Press Institute (IPI) has expressed concern about the pressure placed on news organisations by the weak rule of law and the perceived lack of judicial independence in Bangladesh. An IPI high-level mission, including the IPI director David Dadge, travelled to Bangladesh in late 2008 to meet top media and political figures. The mission found that impunity in the crimes against...

Several copies of the weekly Le Nouveau Réveil newspaper were seized on March 4 from the newsstands and destroyed by two unidentified persons in Cocody and Yopougon, two suburbs of Abidjan, capital of Côte d'Ivoire, according to the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA). MFWA's correspondent reported that the publishers of Le Nouveau Réveil have since lodged a formal complaint to the Ivorian...

Oleg Salnikov, author of the article "Ordinary Fascism Attempts to Take Root on These Isles" published by the newspaper Gubernskiye Vedomosti, has been receiving death threats, according to the Glasnost Defence Foundation (GDF) . The story about an extremist organisation led by two former law enforcement officers was also posted on the website of the Sakhalin-Kurily news agency, triggering a...

Christoph Müller, a leading Swiss TV reporter and producer, was handcuffed and arrested on arrival in Thailand on February 27, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. He was freed on bail 24 hours later but the police confiscated his passport and he is not allowed to leave the country until further notice. His employer, the German-language Swiss TV station SF, has described the measures as a...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) welcomes the release of Al-Waha editor Nedjar El-Hadj Daoud Tuesday evening in the southern city of Ghardaïa, where he had been jailed on the morning of March 2. The Algiers-based daily El Watan said he was released from the city’s prison on medical grounds. “A commission tasked with executing the court ruling decided to suspend the detention order,” Nedjar told Al...

A TV production company in a Parisian suburb was raided on March 2 in connection with a documentary about Martinique in which a member of the French Caribbean island’s white business elite, Alain Huyghues-Despointes, made racist comments, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) The comments sparked a controversy after the Tac Presse documentary, called “The Last Masters of Martinique” and...

The Russian prosecutor-general’s office has filed an appeal before the supreme court against the acquittal of three men who were accused in connection with the 2006 murder of Novaya Gazeta reporter Anna Politkovskaya. A jury found the three men not guilty on February 19 at the end of a trial before a Moscow military court. “We point out that the Politkovskaya murder has not been solved,” Reporters...

The Almaty appeal court has been accused by press freedom groups of seeking to ruin an independent newspaper by imposing a fine that it and its journalists would find impossible to pay. A case for defamation was brought by parliament deputy, Ramin Madinov, against the editor of the weekly newspaper Tasjargan, Bakyttoul Makimbai and a journalist, Almas Koucherbayev after it carried an article on...