News

A magazine editor in Colombia is facing a prison term after a judge reviewing a complaint against the magazine deemed two published corrections as insufficient, according to the Bogotá-based Fundación para la Libertad de Prensa (FLIP). In spite of the fact that "Semana" magazine has issued two corrections concerning information it published on allegations about the influence a particular...

Four Azeri minority journalists who were arrested on September 10 while meeting at a political activist’s home in Tehran were released on November 8 after paying bail of 50 million toumen (45,000 euros) but they are still charged with “conspiracy” and “offence against national security.” They spent nearly two months in solitary confinement in section 209 of Tehran’s Evin prison where, according to...

A Spanish prosecutor has recommended five-month prison sentences for two journalists— reporter Asier Velez de Mendizábal of the daily Gara and photographer Lánder Fernández de Arroyabe of the Argazki Press agency—who covered a demonstration by a radical Basque nationalist group in Pamplona, in the northern region of Navarre. The sentences were requested on November 3 by prosecutor Edilberto...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has called for the release of Shawan Dawodi, the editor of the weekly Hawal, who was sentenced to a month in prison and a fine by a court in the Kurdish city of Sulaymaniyah on November 4 over a series of articles four years ago criticising judicial reform in Iraqi Kurdistan. “There are no legal grounds for this arbitrary sentence as it is based on a law that has...

The shooting down of a Pakistani journalist by security forces in a case of mistake identity in the country's Swat Valley region has come in for widespread comdemnation. Pakistani security forces shot Qari Muhammad Shoib, a Mingora-based print journalist on Saturday night when e failed to stop his car for a military convoy enforcing a curfew at Nishat Chowk of Mingora city in the restive Swat...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned a Brussels court ruling on November 4 ordering weekly Humo to immediately withdraw all copies of its latest issue from sale on penalty of paying a fine of 250 euros for each copy left on sale. The summary judgment was issued in response to an action brought by the federal police chief about a satirical photo-montage showing his head, and that of his...

On the 21st anniversary of the coup that brought Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to power, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on the longtime leader to end his government's repressive media tactics. Ben Ali, who seized power from Habib Bourguiba in a bloodless coup, has pursued some of the most restrictive press tactics in the Arab world, CPJ research shows. Through...

Malaysian blogger Raja Petra Kamarudin, editor and founder of the Malaysia Today news and commentary website, has been released. High Court Justice Syed Ahmad Helmy Syed Ahmad ruled on November 7 that Raja Petra's detention under the Internal Security Act (ISA) was illegal and that the Home Minister had acted beyond his authority when he sentenced the blogger to two years in prison, the Committee...

Fiji's military government has recommended to the High Court sentence to the editor and publisher of Fiji Times to jail. Last week, the newspaper printed a front page apology and admitted that it was in contempt, for publishing a letter critical of the High Court Panel, which made a judgment that the 2006 coup was legal. On Monday, Fiji's Solicitor-General told Justice Thomas Hickie that the...

Britain's security agencies and police would be given unprecedented and legally binding powers to ban the media from reporting matters of national security, the Independent newspaper has reported. The Intelligence and Security Committee, the parliamentary watchdog of the intelligence and security agencies which has a cross-party membership from both Houses, wants to press ministers to introduce a...