News

Four Radio Benghazi journalists who worked on a programme that specialises in covering corruption were arrested Wednesday evening outside the station in Benghazi (650 km east of Tripoli) and were released at midday Thursday, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) reported. Their arrests come amid a general crackdown by the Libyan authorities on news media, especially independent news websites. “We firmly...

Muhammad al-Rabou'e, a Yemeni reporter for the monthly Al-Qahira who wrote several articles about the alleged activities of an infamous criminal group was killed Saturday, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Al-Jazeera and other news outlets said five individuals burst into Al-Rabou'e home in the district of Beni Qais, in Yemen’s northern province of Hajja, and shot him...

Simon Hervé Nko’o and Serge Sabouang, two journalists who were arrested by members of the General Directorate for External Investigation (DGRE) on February 5 without any reason being given, were finally released on the evening of February 12, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF).

Mohammed Shu’i Al-Rabu’i, a correspondent for several news media including the opposition newspaper Al-Qahira, was gunned down on February 13 in the district of Beni Qais (in the governorate of Hajja), 120 km northwest of Sana’a, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Those allegedly responsible have already been arrested. “We offer this journalist’s colleagues and family our heartfelt...

A court in Diyarbakir, the largest city in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast, has passed a 21-year jail sentence on Ozan Kilinç, the owner and editor of the country’s only Kurdish-language daily, Azadiya Welat, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. After finding Kilinç guilty of criminal propaganda in support of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), the court sentenced him in...

There have been renewed cases of threats and physical violence against Bulgarian journalists in the past few days, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). An assault on TV reporter Dimitar Varbanov on February 10 and a police spokesman’s threats against news agency reporter Ivan Yanev in the city of Stara Zagora on February 8 show that a climate of intimidation continues. These incidents and...

Mallam Tukur, the editor-in-chief and publisher of the independent weekly, Desert Herald, based in Kaduna State of Nigeria has been arrested for defamation, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Two plainclothes police arrested Tukur on defamation charges at his office in Kaduna on February 8 and took him to a police station in Bauchi State. He was released on bail the following...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) on Friday called on the Costa Rican legislature to remove criminal defamation provisions from its penal code after a recent Supreme Court decision eliminated prison terms from its 1902 Printing Press Law. The provisions were eliminated from the Printing Press Law—known as Ley de Imprenta—which imposed prison sentences of up to 120 days for defamation in...

Luis Valdez Villacorta, the former mayor of Pucallpa (the capital of the east-central region of Ucayali), has been acquitted for the second time of masterminding the murder of radio Frecuencia Oriental journalist Alberto Rivera Fernández in Pucallpa on April 21, 2004, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Valdez was acquitted on February 8 by a Lima criminal court at the end of a...

Hackers broke into the website of the Turkish and Armenian-language newspaper Agos Thursday and succeeded in posting a photo of Ogün Samast – the youth who is on trial for the January 2007 murder of the newspaper’s founder, Hrant Dink – together with a Turkish flag background and around 10 lines of ultra-nationalistic comments, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Headlined “Our good...