Libya

A recent wave of anti-press violations, including repressive legislation, abductions, and physical attacks, threatens to set back the steps Libya has taken toward democracy since the revolution that removed the late Muammar Qaddafi from power, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. On February 5, the General National Congress (GNC) amended the Qaddafi-era penal code that stipulated a...

There has been a steadily mounting violence against media personnel in Libya, including the February 11 abduction of four journalists in two separate incidents in the capital, Tripoli. In the first of two incidents, three journalists with state-owned Al-Wataniya TV who are normally based in the southern city of Sabha – photographers Faddan Hussein Al-Sakit and Ibrahim Saeed Abdelda’im and...

NATO carried out airstrikes on the Tripoli headquarters of the state-owned national TV broadcaster Al-Jamahiriya and two of its installations on July 30. According to Al-Jamahiriya, three of its journalists were killed and 21 others were wounded in the airstrikes but this could not be immediately verified. The impossibility of immediate verification is yet another reminder of the difficulty of...

The Libyan government should immediately release the body of South African photographer Anton Hammerl, and investigate the role of the armed forces in his death, Human Rights Watch and the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Hammerl, 41, was shot and killed by government forces near Brega in eastern Libya on April 5. Three journalists traveling with him were detained by Libyan authorities...

Anton Hammerl, a freelance South African photographer who was detained in early April, has appeared in government custody in Libya and is apparently in good health. Global Post told CPJ that the South African government has received information from Libyan authorities that Hammerl is well and will be permitted to speak to his family soon. Clare Morgana Gillis, an American freelancer for The...

The International Federation of Journalists has mourned the tragic death of photojournalists Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros, killed by a mortar attack in the besieged Libyan city of Misrata, on Wednesday April 20. Two other photojournalists, Guy Martin and Michael Christopher Brown, were both seriously injured in by the same mortar fire along Tripoli Street at the heart of the fight between...

The Libyan government has decided to deport 26 foreign journalists on the grounds that their visas had expired. The names of journalists, who had all been invited to Tripoli by the government, were posted last night in the lobby of the hotel where they were staying. They were initially told they would have to leave today. But the authorities announced today that their “departure was postponed...

(Associated Press): Hala Misrati once wrote romance tales about lost love. Now she's the ferocious face of Libya's regime, a star talk-show host on state TV lashing out daily against Moammar Gadhafi's enemies. She railed against a Libyan woman who claimed to Western journalists she had been raped by Gadhafi militiamen, calling her a "liar" and suggesting she was a "whore." On live TV, Misrati

One of four Al Jazeera journalists detained by Libyan forces has been released after a bizarre turn of events that saw the team being arrested, freed and then rearrested. Lotfi Al Masoudi, a Tunisian national, crossed the border into Tunisia on Sunday night. An Al Jazeera spokesman said that the network is "glad to see the end of the ordeal that Lotfi unnecessarily went through" while calling for...

Syrian journalist Rana Akbani has been missing in the east of Libya since March 28. In an interview with her that was broadcast by Al-Libya TV, a presenter accused her of spying. A resident in Libya for the past 15 years or so, Akbani works for the arts and culture section of the Libyan newspaper Al-Shams. In the Al-Libya TV interview, which has been posted online, presenter Hala Misrati accused...