West Asia - North Africa

Officials shut down the office of the Association of Iranian Journalists in Tehran on Wednesday night, just after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was sworn in for a second term, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. Director Badr al-Sadat Mufidi, told the BBC Persian service that agents stormed the office with a warrant from Saeed Mortazavi, Tehran's prosecutor general. The...

Moroccan authorities banned two magazines from newsstands over the weekend after they published a poll about the 10-year reign of King Mohammed VI. Official MAP news agency said independent weeklies, Tel Quel, a French-language publication, and Nichane, an Arabic-language magazine, were seized for failing to respect the 1958 press code. Communications Minister Khalid Naciri told the Associated...

A member of extremist Sunni group Jaish Mohammed group has confessed to the 2006 rape and murder of prominent Iraqi TV reporter Atwar Bahjat. The confession was made in a videotape broadcast at a press conference Tuesday. Suspect Yasser al-Takhi described how he and three others abducted and killed Bahjat and her two-man crew, Adnan Abdullah and Khaled Mohsen, in the central Iraqi town of Samarra...

Five journalists have been released in Iran, including one on Monday who had been held for a year. The other four were picked up in the crackdown following the June 12 elections, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. Authorities released freelance journalist Massoud Kurdpour on Monday after he completed a one-year jail term in Mahabad Central Prison in northwestern Iran...

The Saudi Arabia offices of a Lebanon-based satellite station controlled by tycoon Prince Alwaleed bin Talal could face closure over a racy talk show featuring a man boasting about his sex life, Agence France-Presse (AFP) has reported. The local operations of the Saudi billionaire's broadcaster LBC could be shut down because of the "offensive nature" of the programme, Abdullah al-Othaim, a senior...

The Palestinian military intelligence service arrested freelance journalist Mustafa Sabri from his home in Qalqilya, in the northern West Bank, on Wednesday morning, the Palestinian Centre for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA) has reported. His wife said that military intelligence personnel arrived at their home at 1:00 a.m. (local time) and took her husband to an unknown location. Sabri had...

Three bloggers have been detained with charge in Egypt since last week, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Islamist blogger Abdel Rahman Ayyash, who writes for Al-Ghareeb (The Stranger), was arrested at the Cairo airport on Tuesday on his return from Turkey where he attended a youth conference, according to multiple news reports. Muslim Brotherhood member Magdi Saad, who used...

Two detained Iranian photographers are said to have confessed sending pictures to the "enemy" following the country's disputed June 12 presidential elections, according to the official Iranian News Agency (IRNA). IRNA Wednesday reported that photographers Majid Saeedi and Satyar Emami have confessed to having ties with a movement seeking to topple the Iranian government. IRNA's statement said that...

Death threats have been made against the Al-Jazeera in Yemen. Murad Hashem, Al-Jazeera's bureau chief in Sana'a, told the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) that on Sunday morning an unknown caller contacted his office and left a threatening message with his secretary that said: "Tell the bureau chief that his death is imminent. By God, we will get to him [even] at his home," the caller said...

Real progress at the start of King Mohammed’s reign in Morocco has been followed by reverses and tension, especially from 2002 onwards. Thursday marks the 10th anniversary of Mohammed VI’s accession to the throne on July 23, 1999. The priority continues to be a thorough overhaul of the press code, which is much too severe, says Reporters sans Frontières (RSF), which has carried out an evaluation