Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has expressed outrage at Panama's decision to offer political asylum to María del Pilar Hurtado, a former head of Colombia’s leading intelligence agency, the Administrative Department of Security (DAS). Hurtado is due to go to the Panamanian consulate in Bogotá today to receive documents allowing her to travel to Panama. Panama’s...
Pakistani journalist Lala Hameed Baloch's body was found with gunshot wounds on Thursday outside of Turbat, in western Pakistan's Baluchistan province, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. Hameed disappeared on October 25 while on his way from Turbat to his home in Gwader, according to the Gwader Press Club. Local journalists believe he was seized by Pakistani...
Egyptian authorities should immediately release Youssef Shaaban, a reporter for the online newspaper Al-Badil who was arrested while covering street protests in Alexandria, and drop the criminal charges against him, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has demanded. Shaaban was arrested Friday during a demonstration against a new construction project in the Abu Suleyman...
Mazen Mardan al-Baghdadi, a reporter for Al-Mosuliya television, was gunned down on Sunday in front of his home, according to news reports. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) called on Iraqi authorities to thoroughly and transparently investigate the murder. Three armed men showed up at the journalist's house on Sunday at 6 p.m. and told al-Baghdadi's father they were with military...
Four journalists are still missing in the southwestern state of Michoacán, one of the epicentres of the federal offensive against the drug cartels that President Felipe Calderón launched on taking office in December 2006, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). José Antonio García Apac, the editor of the local weekly Ecos de la Cuenca, has been missing the...
Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has appealed for calm and respect for the media after a week in which most journalists in the capital, Conakry, have been staying indoors for fear of being targeted by activists or by the security forces in a wave of violence that began one week after the second round of the presidential election on November 7. The Sabari FM/Le...
Abdou Latif Coulibaly, one of Senegal’s most prominent journalists and writers, and two of the journalists who work with him on his weekly newspaper, La Gazette, have been fined 20 million CFA francs (30,000 euros) and given one-month suspended jail sentences in a libel case about alleged kickbacks in the allocation of a mobile phone licence. The much-awaited sentence – issued on November 16, two...
Reporter Nqobani Ndlovu remained in police custody on Thursday despite expectations that he would appear in court on criminal defamation charges, local journalists told New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Police in Zimbabwe's second largest city, Bulawayo, arrested Ndlovu, a reporter for the private weekly Standard, on Wednesday and charged him with criminal defamation in...
Sebahate Shala of the KosovaPress agency has been receiving threats since raising a sensitive issue about two members of the ruling Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK) at a news conference that Andy Sparkes, the deputy head of the European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX), gave on November 12, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Shala asked Sparkes...
Abdul Kareem Suleiman Amer, the Egyptian blogger known as Kareem Amer, was finally set free on the evening of November 15, 10 days after completing a four-year jail sentence, and is now reunited with his family. He has decided for the time being to make no statement, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). The blogger was again subjected to physical...
