Europe - Central Asia

4 March 2010

Court releases policeman who fatally shot detained Ingushetia website publisher

The Ingush supreme court has ordered the release of the policeman who fatally shot Magomed Yevloyev, the owner of the Ingushetiya.ru news website, on August 31, 2008, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. By reducing the gravity of the charge on which Ibragim Yevloyev (no relation) was convicted, the court was able to commute his two-year jail sentence to two years of “supervised residence...

More
25 February 2010

Turkey: Website editor freed conditionally but still accused of belonging to terrorist group

Aylin Duruoglu, editor the Vatan newspaper’s website, Gazetevatan.com, was granted a conditional release by an Istanbul court on February 23, 10 months after her arrest on April 27 for alleged links to a clandestine armed group called Devrimci Karargah (Revolutionary Headquarters), Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Nine other people who were arrested in the same operation, including...

More
19 February 2010

Belarus: Leading journalist harassed over coverage of trial of top officials

Investigative journalist Maryna Koktysh, the deputy editor of the Minsk-based independent newspaper Narodnaya Volya, is being continually harassed over her coverage of a case involving senior police officers and interior ministry officials in the southeastern Belarus city of Homyel, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. “The independent press has just done its duty by reporting...

More
12 February 2010

Turkey: Kurdish newspaper editor sentenced to 21 years in prison

A court in Diyarbakir, the largest city in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast, has passed a 21-year jail sentence on Ozan Kilinç, the owner and editor of the country’s only Kurdish-language daily, Azadiya Welat, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. After finding Kilinç guilty of criminal propaganda in support of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), the court sentenced him in...

More
12 February 2010

Bulgaria: Broadcast licence blackmail and disturbing increase in violence

There have been renewed cases of threats and physical violence against Bulgarian journalists in the past few days, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). An assault on TV reporter Dimitar Varbanov on February 10 and a police spokesman’s threats against news agency reporter Ivan Yanev in the city of Stara Zagora on February 8 show that a climate of intimidation continues. These incidents and...

More
11 February 2010

Turkey: Supporters of Hrant Dink's alleged killer hack into newspaper’s website

Hackers broke into the website of the Turkish and Armenian-language newspaper Agos Thursday and succeeded in posting a photo of Ogün Samast – the youth who is on trial for the January 2007 murder of the newspaper’s founder, Hrant Dink – together with a Turkish flag background and around 10 lines of ultra-nationalistic comments, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Headlined “Our good...

More
11 February 2010

Confusion and disappointment at 12th hearing of Hrant Dink murder trial

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) on Thursday expressed shock at the conditions in which the trial of the alleged killers of Hrant Dink was being held after attending the 12th hearing in the case on February 8. Dink, a Turkish journalist of Armenian origin, was shot dead in Istanbul on January 19, 2007. He was the editor of the bi-lingual Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos and a critic of Turkey’s...

More
10 February 2010

Uzbekistan: Relief at release of photographer but revulsion at hypocrisy of justice system

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has voiced relief at the release Wednesday of photographer Umida Akhmedova but expressed dismayed at the “extremely dangerous precedent” set by the Tashkent court which found her guilty of “slander” and “insulting the Uzbek people”. The court convicted her only two days into her trial but immediately released her on the grounds that she was eligible under an amnesty...

More
10 February 2010

Kazakhstan: Court climbdown interrupts latest government offensive against media

A court court in the Almaty district of Medeu rescinded the order it issued a week earlier banning all of the Kazakh media from publishing any information that could damage the reputation of President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s son-in-law, businessman Timur Kulibayev. The Medeu district court issued the ban on February 1 in response to the legal action which Kulibayev brought against four independent...

More
5 February 2010

Belarus: Authorities step up pressure on independent journalists

The Belarusian police are increasingly harassing and intimidating independent journalists by charging them with relatively minor offences, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. In the latest case, Ivan Shulha, a journalist who works for the privately-owned satellite television station Belsat TV and who is an active member of the independent Belarus Association of Journalists (BAJ), was...

More