Shwan Ahmed, a freelance Iraqi journalist, is facing criminal defamation charges based on a series of articles he wrote alleging corruption in Sulaimaniyah, in northeastern Iraq. Ahmed told the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) he was threatened by one of the parties in the case. Ahmed said charges were filed against him and that he received the threats after publishing a...
José Luis García Paneque, Pablo Pacheco Ávila, and Lester Luis González Pentón, independent Cuban journalists imprisoned during the 2003 crackdown against the political opposition and the press, are among the five dissidents to be released soon and sent to Spain as part of an agreement between the government of President Raúl Castro and the Catholic Church, international press reports said. “We’re...
Ramazan Yesergepov, the ailing imprisoned editor of the now-defunct independent newspaper Alma-Ata Info, is on a hunger-strike for the third consecutive day on Thursday in a penal colony in the southern Kazakh city of Taraz, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). On June 25, Yesergepov announced his decision to go on hunger strike starting July 6 to protest his...
Azerbaijan’s Garadagh District Court in Baku on Tuesday sentenced imprisoned independent editor Eynulla Fatullayev to two and a half years in a strict-regime prison after finding him guilty of drug possession. Fatullayev, a 2009 recipient of CPJ’s International Press Freedom Award, has already served more than three years of an eight and a half year term on a series of fabricated charges...
An appeals court in Tunisia on Tuesday upheld a criminal conviction and prison sentence handed down to Fahem Boukadous, a correspondent for the satellite television station Al-Hiwar al-Tunisi, in connection with his coverage of violent labour protests in the Gafsa mining region in 2008. Boukadous, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), faces a four-year prison term on charges of...
None of the Valley-based newspapers could hit the stands on Thursday as government restricted the movement of scribes and other staff members of various news organisations, the Greater Kashmir has reported.. The state government had cancelled curfew passes of media persons on Wednesday with police and paramilitary CRPF troopers enforcing curfew strictly at Press Enclave in Srinagar. The last time...
Five representative bodies of newspaper owners, editors, working journalists, photo journalists and video journalists on Friday denounced the government claim that restrictions on media had been lifted, the Hindu reported. They decided to suspend the publication of newspapers for Saturday in view of the insufficient number of curfew passes issued and continued attacks on media. For the last two...
Another Mexican journalist, Hugo Alfredo Olivera, was found dead on Tuesday in Michoacán state, according to news reports and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Unidentified assailants shot Olivera three times with a 32 mm gun and left his body inside the reporter’s truck in a rural area near the city of Apatzingán, a spokesman at the state prosecutor’s office told CPJ. Olivera’s body was...
The Press Guild of Kashmir has denounced the curbs imposed on media by the state authorities and use of force against media persons, the Hindu has reported. In an extraordinary meeting of the Guild, which was presided over by the President, Bashir Ahmad Bashir, it was felt that in the wake of present turbulence the government should have ensured free flow of information to keep the public updated...
Denmark's top prosecutor on Friday charged a Somali man with terrorism for allegedly trying to kill a cartoonist who caricatured the Prophet Mohammed. Joergen Steen Soerensen said the man, who cannot be named under a court order, wanted to "seriously frighten the population" and destabilise Denmark in the January attack on Kurt Westergaard. The 28-year-old allegedly forced himself into Westergaard...
