Somalia

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...

Journalists in Somalia are getting caught in the crossfire of increased fighting between joint government and African Union forces against Al-Shabaab insurgents. Radio Simba sports reporter Ahmed Hassan was hit in a crossfire while covering a soccer game in Mogadishu on Wednesday, according to local journalists. Hassan was rushed to Medina Hospital, where doctors performed surgery on his stomach...

Security agents with Somalia's Interim Transitional Government arrested the director and news editor of Radio Shabelle on Sunday after the independent station aired a report saying the president was unable to visit areas recently captured by government and AU forces due to security concerns, according to news reports and CPJ interviews. The Ministry of Information deemed the March 22 report...

Two members of privately-owned Radio Shabelle were arrested Sunday in Mogadishu, while two other journalists have been held in the northeastern region of Puntland and the northwestern region of Somaliland for more than a week, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. RSF called for the immediately release of all four journalists and a halt to their persecution...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) on Tuesday called on representatives of the international community gathered at a conference on Somalia, organised by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office at Wilton Park, UK, to give priority to measures to protect journalists in Somalia as the transitional period of the Transitional Federal Government comes to an end in August 2011. The conference...

A three-year jail sentence and a fine of 6 million Somaliland shillings (around 1,000 dollars) has been imposed by a court in Hargeisa, the capital of the breakaway northwestern territory of Somaliland, on Mohamud Abdi Jama, the editor of the independent newspaper Waheen, for allegedly libelling local officials. “This sentence (on Sunday) has all the hallmarks of summary and punitive justice,”...

The National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ) has welcomed the release of journalist Yusuf Ali Adan, an online reporter for Somalifans news website, whose whereabouts remained unknown until December 2010, when Puntland Intelligence Service (PIS) produced him at the Criminal Court in Bossasso town of Puntland. Adan, who was released on December 30, was first brought to the Criminal Court in...

Radio journalist Abdifatah Jama, who was imprisoned in August for airing an interview with an Islamist rebel leader in the semi-autonomous region of Puntland, has been given a presidential pardon and released, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. Jama, deputy director of Horseed Media, had begun serving a six-year prison sentence after being convicted on treason...

A pair of assailants lobbed a grenade Monday evening at Horseed FM, a private radio station broadcasting from the port city of Bossasso, the economic capital of Somalia's semi-autonomous Puntland region, according to local reports. After the grenade exploded, one of the attackers began shooting at an adjacent café, Horseed Managing Director Mahad M. Ahmed told the New York-based Committee to...

Authorities in Somaliland should immediately lift a suspension order imposed against the UK-based satellite broadcaster Universal TV, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. The order bars the station's correspondents from reporting in the breakaway republic in northern Somalia, Khadar Mahamed, Universal TV senior newscaster and producer, told CPJ. "This abrupt order...