News

The two men who murdered journalist Birendra Shah have been awarded life imprisonment. A judge in the central Bara district sentenced Mainejar Giri and Ram Ekwal Sahini to life terms and confiscated their property on May 30, according to local news reports. The two abducted and killed Shah, a local correspondent for the Nepal FM radio station, Dristi Weekly, and Avenues TV, on October 4, 2007...

The body of Noel López Olguín, a local journalist based in the eastern state of Veracruz who had been missing since March 8, was found near Jáltipan, on June 1, four days after Alejandro Castro Chirinos, also known as “El Dragón,” was captured in the nearby city of Coatzacoalcos and confessed to participating in his murder. Police said Castro, who was caught in possession of López’s camera, told...

TV presenter José Agustín “Gajo” Silvestre de los Santos, was released on bail of 100,000 pesos (2,600 euros) June 2 after six days in detention in the eastern city of La Romana on charges of insulting and defaming prosecutor José Polanco Ramírez by accusing him on the air of links to drug traffickers. He will have to present himself to the court every 30 days, according to Paris-based press...

Authorities in the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region restricted domestic reporting on the student-led protests, which were sparked after Chinese coal mine employees killed two ethnic Mongolians who voiced complaints about the environmental impact of mining in mid-May, New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported quoting international news reports...

Rodion Marinichev, a special correspondent for the Moscow-based online broadcaster Dozhd (The Rain), has been deported from from Belarus, according to New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Police in Minsk detained Marinichev on Monday, after he interviewed Irina Khalip, a prominent Belarusian journalist who had been handed a suspended two year prison term...

Rustam Makhmudov, the suspected hit-man in the October 2006 murder of Novaya Gazeta reporter Anna Politkovskaya, was arrested May 31 in Chechnya, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). “The arrest of the man suspected of carrying out the Politkovskaya shooting is a major advance but many questions remain unanswered,” RSF said. “Nearly five years have gone by...

Russian TV reporter Rodion Marinichev was given 24 hours to leave the country after his arrest May 30 in Minsk and was banned from returning for five years. His deportation came just days after President Alexander Lukashenko urged his government to rein in news media which, in his view, have been “creating the panic” that is the cause of the country’s current economic crisis. “We condemn the...

Realny Azerbaijan editor Eynulla Fatullayev was finally released May 26 on a presidential pardon after four years in prison. “We share the joy of Eynulla Fatullayev’s family and colleagues,” Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) said after confirming that he arrived at his home at around 6 p.m. May 26. “He had become the symbol of abuse of authority by a regime that used...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has expressed “outrage” at the May 26 invasion by Latvia’s KNAB anti-corruption police of the offices of the daily paper Neatkarīgā Rīta Avīze (Independent Morning Press) and its parent firm SIA Mediju Nams and their theft (by copying) of all the data on its computers (including e-mails) and their refusal to allow any photographing or...

The youngest son of Indonesia’s former President Suharto - Hutomo Mandala Putra was awarded on May 24 damages worth 12.5 billion Rupiah ($1.46 million) for a magazine article which described him as a “convicted murderer.” Also known as “Tommy Suharto,” the description in the article was a reference to his 2002 conviction for ordering the murder of a Supreme Court judge. “It is very disturbing that...