News

TV reporter Ashiq Ali Mangi has been murdered in the southeastern district of Khairpur in yet another sign of the growing dangers for journalists in Pakistan, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Employed by the privately-owned television station Mehran, Mangi was gunned down as he rode to the local press club in Gambat on a motorcycle on February 17. Sources told RSF that Mangi’s murder...

Payam Fazlinejad, an Iranian reporter who works for the ultra-conservative daily Kayhan was assaulted earlier this week. The official news agency IRNA said he was taken to Bagiolah Azam hospital after being seriously injured in an attack by several individuals on motorcycles on the evening of February 21in Tehran. Fazlinejad began his career as a journalist working for the weekly Sinema at the end...

Palestinian journalist Tareq Abu Zayd, the correspondent of Hamas-run TV station Al-Aqsa, has been given an 18-month jail sentence by a court in the West Bank city of Nablus, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. The sentence was imposed by a Palestinian Authority military court on February 16. Zayd has been held for more than three months in Nablus, 60 km north of Jerusalem. The supreme...

Investigative journalist Maryna Koktysh, the deputy editor of the Minsk-based independent newspaper Narodnaya Volya, is being continually harassed over her coverage of a case involving senior police officers and interior ministry officials in the southeastern Belarus city of Homyel, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. “The independent press has just done its duty by reporting...

Syrian reporter Ali Taha was freed on February 7 after 36 days in detention, and cameraman Ali Ahmed a few days later, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. The two journalists, who work for the TV station Rotana, were arrested on January 2. “The release of these two journalists is good news, but we condemn that the fact that they were held for a more than month without charge,” Paris...

Eritrean journalist and essayist Yirgalem Fisseha Mebrahtu has been held in solitary confinement for the past few weeks in May Srwa prisons, to the north of Asmara, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. It is not known why she is being given this treatment. Employed by Asmara-based Radio Bana, Yirgalem Fisseha was arrested when the authorities raided the station on February 22, 2009 and...

Iraqi reporter Hussam Daoud al-Eqabi, who was seized by unidentified armed men on Wednesday, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Al-Eqbi is a political reporter for Al-Ahed, a radio station in Kirkuk affiliated with radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr. According to Abed Abu Zahra, head of Al-Ahed, four unidentified gunmen abducted Hussam Dawood al-Eqabi, 22, in front of his...

Zimbabwean authorities are still harassing and intimidating the Zimbabwean, a privately-owned newspaper that is edited in Britain and printed in South Africa. In the latest instance, criminal charges of “publishing falsehoods” have been brought against the directors of Adquest, the company that distributes it inside Zimbabwe. No date has yet been set for their trial, according to Reporters sans...

The Salvadorean police have arrested three more suspects in the investigation into documentary filmmaker Christian Poveda’s murder on September 2, 2009, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Their arrests bring the total number of suspects detained to 28. The police say they think a total of 36 people had a part in the killing of Poveda, who had French and Spanish dual citizenship. The...

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe Vélez said on Tuesday that those who illegally spy on the press are “enemies of his government” during a meeting with a delegation from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and the Foundation for Freedom of the Press (FLIP). Uribe issued the statement at the urging of the CPJ and FLIP delegation, which met with the president and top government officials...