The criminal case against Andrei Dumler, the head of the information agency Baikal Media Consulting (BMK), has been thrown out of court, the Moscow-based Centre for Journalism in Extreme Situations (CJES) has reported. The journalist was charged with slandering the department of the Federal Service for the Enforcement of Punishments (UFSIN) for the Republic of Buryatia. In November 2007, a report...
Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has accused the judicial authorities of a “crude manipulation” in the case of reporter Agil Khalil’s stabbing on March 13. A Sergey Strekalin appeared before a Baku court Thursday on charges of stabbing Khalil and consuming drugs. “Despite international criticism, the Azerbaijani authorities are still trying to discredit Khalil by turning this stabbing into a vice...
NTV and other Turkish media have for the past four days been airing footage of the surveillance cameras of a bank and a shop near the Istanbul-based weekly Agos that was recorded on January 19, 2007, the day the newspaper’s editor, Hrant Dink, was gunned down outside. The footage shows other people with the alleged killer, Ogün Samast, and proves that the Dink family’s lawyers were right to...
A Croatian reporter who exposed a series of organised crime and corruption cases has been beaten with baseball bats in front of his home in an assault the president condemned as an attack on media freedom. Dusan Miljus, who covers organised crime and corruption for the popular Croatian daily Jutarnji List, was assaulted by two unidentified men in a parking lot near his house in Zagreb on Monday...
Azerbaijani prosecutors have failed to conduct a thorough and transparent investigation into the brazen assaults against Azadlyg reporter Agil Khalil. In the last three months, Khalil has been beaten, stabbed, and pushed onto train tracks. He has also escaped a kidnapping attempt. "Yet despite abundant evidence as to who committed the crimes, there has been no progress in these cases. If anything...
The daily Nezavissimaya Gazeta has been ordered to vacate offices it rents from the city of Moscow within one month, in a move seen by press freedom advocates as worrying for press freedom in Russia. The notice to quit is supposedly to allow for major works in the building, but the paper’s management is convinced the decision is linked to recent articles critical of a speech by the mayor, Yuri...
The Belarusian foreign ministry’s has refused to issue accreditation to reporter Alyaksey Minchonak of Radio Racyja, a station based in the Polish city of Bialystok that broadcasts to Belarus. This latest obstacle for the station comes a month after the police raided its Minsk bureau and seized equipment, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. “The authorities are continuing to harass Radio...
ARTICLE 19 has welcomed the May 27 decision of Russia's Constitutional Court to uphold the appeal of a former NGO leader against criminal charges which were widely believed to be excessive. Manana Aslamazyan, former director of the Educated Media Foundation, had been charged with smuggling after failing to declare an amount of money she brought into Russia in 2007 which slightly exceeded the legal...
A constitutional court Tuesday approved a petition by Manana Aslamazian, the former director of Internews Russia, ruling that article 188.1 of the criminal code, limiting the amount of currency that can be brought into the country, is unconstitutional. Internews Russia was closed in April 2007 after Aslamazian was charged with contraband under the article. “We welcome the constitutional court’s...
Journalists and the news media have consistently been harassed in the past two months by the Moldovan authorities. The biweekly Moldavskie Vedomosti is threatened with closure by an investigation into alleged corruption while the body that allocates broadcast frequencies has been accused of favouring pro-government radio and TV stations. “With just one year to go to parliamentary elections, it is...
