West Asia - North Africa

Ramattan news agency has closed down all its West Bank offices and suspended its website operations after security officers loyal to Paliestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas raided its headquarters in Ramallah and summoned eight employees for interrogation. Ramattan has accused PA of waging a campaign of harassment and intimidation against its staff in the West Bank. The independent agency...

Editors of Egyptian newspaeprs Al- Masry Al-Youm and Al-Wafd and three other journalists have been summoned to appear in court in connection with a ban that has been placed on the publication of any material concerning the Susan Tamim murder case, the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) has reported. On November 22, the prosecution investigated Magdy el-Gallad, the editor of the...

Faten Hamdi, a reporter at Kalima Radio, was arrested by a group of policemen and violently dragged to El Gorjani Police Station after being physically assaulted in front of Tunis's Preparatory Institute for Art and Humanities Studies, the Observatory for the Freedom of Press, Publishing and Creation in Tunisia (OLPEC) has reported. The Kalima reporter was on November 24 covering protests...

Bahman Totonchi, a former contributor to weekly Karfto, has been arrested in Sanandaj, the capital of the northwestern Iranian province of Kurdistan. Another journalist was stabbed and seriously wounded in a neighbouring province after writing about gas shortages in the region, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Totonchi was arrested on November 18 at his Sanandaj home by intelligence...

With Israel continuing its blockade of the Gaza Strip, news reportage has become a casualty. For almost three weeks now, foreign journalists have been denied entry into the area. The Tel Aviv-based Foreign Press Association (FPA), which represents the collective interests of the international media covering the news in Israel and the Palestinian Territories, has now filed a Supreme Court petition

An independent Jordanian newspaper has refused to publish a Palestinian advertisement promoting an Arab peace initiative with Israel because it contains the Jewish state's flag, Agence France-Presse (AFP) has reported. The AFP report said: [ Link] "We refused to publish the paid advertisement because the source, the Palestine Liberation Organisation's (PLO) negotiations department, refused to...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) and the Journalistic Freedom Observatory (JFO) have renewed their call for the release of photographer Ibrahim Jassam of Reuters news agency, who has been detained by the US Army since September 1, 2008. A contingent of US and Iraqi forces took Jassam from his home in Mahmudiyah in the south of the capital, seizing four cameras, his phone and his laptop computer. He...

An Abu Dhabi court of appeal has suspended the Emarat Alyoum newspaper for defamation. The court also on November 19 fined the newspaper's editor-in-chief, Sami Al-Alraymi, 20,000 dirham (approx US$5,400) and the newspaper 500,000 dirham (approx US$136,000). The sentences are based on a lawsuit filed by the Warsan Stables, based in UAE, in January 2007 following a front-page article published in...

An appeal court in Saida (440 km southwest of Algiers) has imposed a two-month prison sentence on journalist Hassan Bourras in addition to the fine of 40,000 dinars (460 euros) to which he was originally sentenced, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. The court on October 28 issued the additional sentence after upholding his conviction on charges of libel and “attacking state institutions...

A judge has banned media coverage of the trial of Egyptian tycoon Hisham Talaat Moustafa who is accused of ordering the killing of Lebanese pop star Suzanne Tamim who jilted him, according to news reports. Egyptian media said Tamim, a close friend of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's son, Gamal, and part of a powerful group long seen as above the law in Egypt's hierarchical class-based society...