West Asia - North Africa

Ten journalists who went to cover a major Israeli military operation in the Shu’fat refugee camp, in East Jerusalem, were targeted by Israeli soldiers firing tear-gas grenades, stun grenades and rubber bullets on February 8 and 9, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Many journalists were wounded while covering the Israeli search and arrest operation in the refugee camp on February 8. As...

Iraqi photographer, Ibrahim Jassam, of Reuters, who had been held by the US military since his arrest on September 1, 2008, was released Wednesday. Jassam was arrested by the US military in Mahmudiyah, 30 km south of Baghdad, and was held at Camp Cropper, near Baghdad airport. Iraq’s central criminal court on November 30, 2008 said he had no case to answer and must be released, but the US army...

Muhammad al-Maqaleh, editor of the opposition Yemeni Socialist Party’s news website Aleshteraki, who was detained in September has finally appeared in government custody. He is being held without charges, local news outlets reported, and alleges that he has been tortured, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Al-Maqaleh was detained by unidentified men in Sana’a after writing an...

An Egyptian criminal court on Tuesday sentence a journalist to one year in prison and a fine of 60,000 Egyptian pounds (US$10,500) on criminal charges filed by another journalist who is also a member of parliament, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. According to local news reports, Yasser Barakat, editor-in-chief of the weekly Al-Mougaz was convicted of defamation in a suit...

An Iraqi government plan to impose restrictive rules on broadcast news media represents an alarming return to authoritarianism, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. New York-based CPJ denounced the rules and called on Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his government to abandon their repressive plan. CPJ’s review of the plan found rules that fall well short of international...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called for Saudi-run satellite operator Arabsat to return to air the Iranian-owned Arabic-language satellite channel Al-Alam, which stopped broadcasting January 27 without prior notice. In a statement published on its website, Al-Alam said that “Arabsat, in continuation of its censorship policies and as a move to confront the news networks which...

A Tunisian appeals court on Saturday upheld a six-month prison sentence against journalist Taoufik Ben Brik, one of President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali’s toughest critics, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. Ben Brik was charged in November 2009 with assault, property damage, and violating public morality in connection with a purported attack on a woman, according to CPJ...

Liquidators took control of Morocco's most critical publication this week after a Casablanca commercial appeals court declared on Monday that Le Journal Hebdomadaire’s former publishing group, Media Trust, and its current one, Trimedia, were bankrupt, lawyers told the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Aboubakr Jamaï, co-founder and former managing director of Le Journal Hebdomadaire, told...

Tthe Supreme Court in Israel on Thuesday overturned prison sentences of eight months, six of them suspended, against Khader Shahin, correspondent for Iranian Arabic-language television al-Alam, and his assistant Mohammed Sarhan, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. After the Israeli army launched operation Cast Lead on the Gaza Strip on December 27, 2008, Shahin, living in Jerusalem, was...

The latest series of bombings in Baghdad, Tuesday afternoon, were targeted at the city’s main hotels, which house many Iraqi and foreign news media. The offices of the Al-Hurra TV station were damaged and many journalists suffered minor injuries, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. RSF condemned this indiscriminate violence against Iraqi civilians but pointed out that the situation for...