West Asia - North Africa

The publisher and editor of the Arabic-language newspaper Al-Ayam were arrested and questioned for wanting to do a report about the king’s mother, a subject regarded as off-limits in Morocco, delayed reports said. “Police measures of this kind result in abuses that we find very disturbing,” Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) said. “Political and judicial harassment of the Moroccan news media is...

The president of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Khalifah Bin Zayid Al-Nahyan, has suspended implementation of a media law which was adopted last month by the National Council, described by press freedom groups as worrying. The president intends to set up a special commission to carry out an exhaustive study of the law, taking account of opinion in the UAE, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has...

Radio Kalima journalist Zakia Dhifawi was arrested by six plain-clothes Tunisian policemen Tuesday afternoon as she was leaving a trade union building in Tunis and was held for an hour at the Charles de Gaulle Street police station, where she was subjected to humiliating treatment. Kalima trainee journalist Faten Hamdi was meanwhile threatened with prosecution yesterday, three days after she was...

Media freedom is nowhere on the agenda in the Middle-East, North Africa and the Gulf. The region remains generally opposed to the free flow of news despite some easing of press laws and a few signs of opening up and greater tolerance. The three sub-regions have very different national constitutions and press laws and a variety of regimes (that also often clash with each other, sometimes violently)

ARTICLE 19 has written to Sheikh Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa, King of Bahrain, asking him to ensure that women's rights activist Ghada Jamsheer is protected from harassment and guaranteed her right to free expression. Jamsheer is leader of the Women's Petition Committee, which works to protect women and advocate for improved women's rights in the country's sharia courts. She has been repeatedly...

A journalist from the pan-Arab satellite channel Al-Arabiyya has been expelled from the Gaza Strip to Egypt, allegedly because of his coverage of Israel’s military operation in Gaza, and its aftermath, Media Line website has reported. Police belonging to the Interior Ministry in the Hamas’ Gaza-based deposed government ordered Al-Arabiyya correspondent, Wa'il Issam, to leave the Gaza Strip...

The Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at ex-US President George W Bush faces trial next week for assaulting a foreign leader after an appellate court refused to reduce the charge, the Associated Press (AP) has reported quoting a judicial official. Muntadar al-Zaidi, 30, who won folk hero status throughout the Arab world for his protest, has been in custody since the December 14, 2008 outburst...

An appeal court in Gafsa (400 km south of Tunis) has confirmed the six-year prison sentence that was imposed on reporter Fahem Boukadous of the satellite TV station el Hiwar el Tounissi in connection with his coverage of last year’s demonstrations in the Gafsa mining region. Boukadous is still in hiding. His sentence was upheld as part of a ruling concerning all of the 38 people who were convicted...

Stephan Hachemi has brought up a civil lawsuit against the Iranian government before the Quebec high court claiming damages for the arrest, detention, torture and death of his mother, Zahra Kazemi, a photographer with dual Iranian and Canadian citizenship, in Tehran in 2003. A preliminary three-day hearing was due to begin in Montreal on February 3, but it has been postponed to May, Reporters sans...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on Israel to return confiscated news footage of its navy allegedly firing on and boarding a ship on Thursday. Journalists who were on board say they filmed Israeli soldiers assaulting a passenger, and that they were later beaten after their equipment had been confiscated, a reporter who was there told CPJ. According to Al-Jazeera English...