Algeria

Algerian authorities are deploying large numbers of police and arresting protesters to prevent demonstrations in the capital in advance of the April 17, 2014 presidential elections, Human Rights Watch said Monday. Officials recently targeted a movement opposed to a fourth term for President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. Algerian authorities should rescind the 2001 decree banning all demonstrations in...

Algerian state radio has stripped top news officials of their duties after an illegal demonstration by about 30 employees, mainly journalists, its director general Tewfik Khelladi said Tuesday, according to Radio Netherlands Worldwide. The National Union of Journalists (SNJ) announced in a statement that the news director of the news channel Chaîne 2, Mohand Said Bensekhria, “has been sacked” and...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has collated an overview of the acts of violence against journalists and other media freedom violations that have taken place in the pasts few days in Northern Africa and the Middle East. The countries concerned are Libya, Algeria, three Gulf states (Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Qatar), Yemen, Iraq (including Iraqi Kurdistan) and Syria...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has denounced Algerian authorities' harassment of two Moroccan journalists who were effectively detained for four days in the town of Tindouf in southwestern Algeria. Lahcen Tigbadar and Mohamed Slimani, journalists with the Moroccan weekly Assahra Ousbouiya, returned home on Wednesday, according to news reports. Algerian police had prevented them from...

Algerian journalist and rights activist Hafnaoui Ghoul is on trial for writing articles critical of local authorities in Djelfa province, says the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Ghoul, a freelance journalist and human rights activist affiliated with the ‎Algerian League for the Defence of Human Rights‎, is facing numerous charges—criminal defamation, insulting government agencies, and...

The Pentagon has brushed off a request from a journalist organization seeking more information and a decision on Bilal Hussein, an Associated Press photographer held for six months in Iraq without formal charges. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman, in a letter to the Committee to Protect Journalists, did not provide details about why Iraqi photographer Bilal Hussein continues to be held without...