West Asia - North Africa

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) has denounced the prosecution of Nizar Al-Abadi, an Iraqi journalist who has been living in Yemen since 1991. ANHRI has also condemned the actions of the public prosecutor, the press and publishers who are acting on behalf of the state security forces against journalists working within the law and the regulations of their profession. Al-Abadi...

A Damascus appeal court judge on Sunday overturned a criminal court's refusal in August to release imprisoned writer and journalist Michel Kilo on completion of three-quarters of a three-year sentence, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. However, Kilo has not been freed and the attorney general of the Damascus prosecutor's office on Tuesday appealed against the decision "in the interests...

Twelve prominent human rights activists, including three leading journalists, who advocate for reform in Syria have been sentenced to two and a half years in prison. The leaders of the Damascus Declaration for Democratic Change—the largest opposition coalition in Syria—were sentenced on October 29 under criminal legislation that prohibits “spreading false news” and “weakening national sentiment”...

The Tunisian government has seized the latest issue of an opposition newspaper and to summon an independent editor to appear before a public prosecutor, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. The Interior Ministry seized the October 22 issue of Mouatinoun, the weekly newspaper of the Democratic Forum for Labour and Liberties party, for “publishing unlawful allegations,” said...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has condemned an Egyptian court’s decision on Saturday to levy steep fines against an editor and reporter for an independent weekly that published a satirical piece about a prominent cleric. A criminal court in Al-Geeza ordered El-Fegr editor Adel Hammouda and writer Mohamed al-Baz to pay fines of 80,000 Egyptian pounds ($14,341) apiece on charges that...

Iraqi authorities have unveiled a new hotline to protect journalists, Reuters has reported. The new hotline was set up with the Journalistic Freedoms Observatory, a non-governmental Iraqi organisation that defends reporters. The hotline numbers are posted on the JFO website www.jfoiraq.org. Journalists who feel threatened can phone JFO, which will quickly pass their case on to a special police...

Hams has announced a new system of accreditation for all telecommunications companies, Internet service providers, broadcast media and news agencies based in the Gaza Strip, which has been controlled by it since June 2007, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Yusef Al-Mansi, the Hamas government’s minister of communication and information technology, told Paris-based RSF that the aim of...

The number of foreign journalists reporting from Baghdad has been declining sharply, says a Washington Post report. The number of journalists travelling with US forces in Iraq has plummeted in the past year. US military officials say they "embedded" journalists 219 times in September 2007. Last month, the number dwindled to 39. Of the dozen US newspapers and newspaper chains that maintained full...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned the "unacceptable silence" of the Israeli authorities about Syrian journalist Ata Farahat, who has been held in custody for more than a year without any explanation. The Israeli media has been banned by court order from publishing news about the trial of the journalist, a correspondent for the Syrian daily Al-Watan and for Syrian public television, who...

Tunisia promotes itself as a progressive nation that protects human rights, but an investigation has found that it aggressively silences journalists and others who challenge the policies of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. In a new report, 'The Smiling Oppressor', the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has found that journalists are subjected to routine imprisonment, assault, harassment, and