West Asia - North Africa

Syrian reporter Ali Taha and cameraman Ali Ahmed have been detained by the Department of Internal Security since January 2, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. The authorities have not said why they were arrested or where they are being held. According to the information available, the security forces arrested Ahmed, who has worked for the TV station Rotana for the past 10 years, while...

The 66-year-old editor of the daily al-Ayyam, Hisham Bashraheel, was arrested on January 6, the day after the security forces lifted a 24-hour siege of his newspaper in Aden, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. One of his sons, managing editor, Hani Bashraheel, was also arrested at the same time. Another son of Hisham Bashraheel, Mohammed Hisham Bashraheel, was arrested on January 5. It...

Repeated death threats have been made against a critical Tunisian journalist living in France. Slim Bagga, former editor of the now-defunct opposition monthly L’Audace, told the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) the latest threat arrived at his Paris home in December in the form of a letter mailed from Lebanon and signed by a man claiming he is a Palestinian refugee living in northern Lebanon...

Police on Tuesday lifted a siege of the newspaper al-Ayyam, after 24 hours of clashes between security forces and the newspaper’s own armed guards. Sources contacted by Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) said that two people were killed in the confrontation, one newspaper guard and one member of the security forces. Seven more were injured. Witnesses said that a guard mortally wounded a police...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned Yemen’s attempt to use the current anti-terror push to crush human rights after security forces today fired on a crowd of protestors staging a ‘sit-in’ outside the offices of a banned newspaper. “The Ali Abdallah Saleh government is taking advantage of support from foreign powers in the fight against terrorism on its soil to deliberately violate people...

This has been a grim year for Yemen’s independent press, the victim of an media war waged by the government under the guise of combating terrorism and sedition, and the situation could get even worse in 2010, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) said Thursday, following the arrests of two more journalists in the past four days. The first of the past week’s media arrests was that of Khalid Jahafi, a...

The Iranian government, struggling to silence the many critical voices in the country, has arrested 11 journalists since Sunday, including former International Press Freedom Award recipient Mashallah Shamsolvaezin and the prominent writer Emadeddin Baghi, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. CPJ condemned the arrests and called for the release of all detained...

A Yemeni reporter is being held without charge after being arrested on Sunday while covering clashes between security forces and separatists in Yemen’s southern province of Dhala, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported quoting local news reports. The arrest is the latest attempt by the government to silence media outlets and journalists covering civil unrest in the...

Iranian authorities censored coverage of the death of a leading reformist cleric, shut down yet another reformist newspaper this week, and continued to arrest journalists in recent days, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. The BBC reported on Monday that the Iranian Labor News Agency was warned by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance to report less on...

A Cairo court of cassation has reject a request by the lawyers of jailed blogger Abdel Kareem Nabil Suleiman, better known by the pen-name of Kareem Amer, for his case to be retried. The judges said they would give the reasons for their ruling on December 26, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. “This decision shows the Egyptian judicial system’s lack of independence,” Paris-based RSF...