News

New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has condemned the detention of a German television crew and the destruction of their footage by authorities in Equatorial Guinea. On Saturday, plainclothes state security agents led by Teobaldo Nchaso Matomba, the director of the state-controlled broadcaster TVGE, arrested reporter Jorg Brase, cameraman Michael Berger...

Urinboy Usmonov, a reporter for the BBC World Service’s Uzbek-language service, is being held in a detention centre in the northwestern city of Khujand for allegedly belonging to Hizb-ut-Tahrir, a non-violent Islamist movement that is banned throughout Central Asia, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Usmonov’s family began looking for him when he went...

Kyrgyz parliament adopted a resolution June 16 issuing a legally binding instruction to the prosecutor-general’s office, culture ministry and justice ministry to block access to the independent online news agency Ferghana ( www.ferghananews.com) because of its coverage of last year’s violence in the south of the country. “Blocking access to Ferghana would constitute a very shocking attack on one...

Pakistani journalist Shafiullah Khan is in critical condition after suffering extensive burns in a double bombing in Peshawar on Saturday. Many groups erroneously reported on Monday that Khan had died in the attack. Yousaf Ali, general secretary of the Khyber Union of Journalists, said Khan suffered burns over 70 per cent of his body and was being treated at a burn center near Rawalpindi. Thirty...

Police in Sierra Leone have arrested three suspects, including a police officer, for the killing of a reporter this Sunday during violent clashes over a land dispute on the outskirts of the capital, Freetown, according to local journalists. Ibrahim Foday, 38, a reporter at the private daily newspaper The Exclusive, was beaten and stabbed by assailants during an outbreak of violence between...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has deplored the death in prison of journalist and writer Hoda Saber and accused the Iranian regime of being responsible. He was taken to hospital with chest pains on June 10 and died of a heart attack a few hours later. The Evin prison authorities did not inform his family, who learned about his death two days later on the Internet....

New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has condemned a growing number of detentions by the Somali government's security forces against journalists covering weeklong protests in the KM4 area of the capital, Mogadishu. On Monday morning, security agents arrested 20-year-old reporter Mohamed Amin, of the privately owned Radio Kulmiye. He had been covering ongoing...

Belarusian authorities must end the retaliatory prosecution of Andrzej Poczobut, a Grodno-based correspondent for the largest Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza, and release him immediately, New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has demanded. Authorities put Poczobut on trial today in the western city of Grodno, local and international press reported. The trial is a...

Reporter Pablo Ruelas Barraza was found shot to death in Huatabampo (Sonora state, northwest Mexico) on June 13, apparently executed by two gunmen who tried first to abduct him. Ruelas, 38, worked for regional dailies Diario del Yaqui in Huatabampo and El Regional de Sonora in Hermosillo. The past month has been grim for the country’s journalists. Local media said Ruelas Barraza, a general...

A one-year jail sentence and a fine of 1000 dirhams (88 euros) has been imposed by a Casablanca court passed June 14 on Rachid Nini, the editor of Al-Massae, one of Morocco’s leading newspapers, at the end of a trial marked by judicial intransigence, repeated adjournments and a refusal to free him on bail. Held since April 28, the newspaper editor was tried on charges of disinformation and...