West Asia - North Africa

A Moroccan court decision Thursday overturned a two-year prison sentence and a fine against blogger and journalist Mohamed Erraji. On September 9, the court in Agadir, in southwest Morocco, convicted Erraji in a 10-minute trial¸ sentencing him to prison and a fine of 5,000 dinars (US$626), according to his family and local news reports. Erraji, 29, is a contributor to HesPress, a Moroccan daily...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has voiced its deep concern about an upsurge in fatwas (religious decrees) calling for the murder of journalists in the Arab and Muslim world. In the latest case, a high-ranking Saudi official, Sheikh Saleh al-Luhidan, president of the superior council of jurisprudence, issued a fatwa on September 12 calling for the murder of owners of Arabic satellite television...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has welcomed the arrest of suspects in the killing of three journalists and a media worker in Mosul. CNN reported that two suspects have been arrested in Mosul, according to Gen Jalal Tawfeeq, military operations commander of Nineveh province, who spoke to al-Sharqiya. According to Reuters, Brig-Gen Khalid Abdul Sattar, the spokesman for Iraqi military...

An Egyptian court sentenced an editor to one year in jail on Wednesday for publishing a newspaper without a licence, the state-run Middle East News Agency (MENA) reported, Reuters has reported. The ruling permitted Ahmad Baker Seleem, editor of the Cairo Today newspaper, to pay 10,000 Egyptian Pounds ($1,845) in bail pending appeal, MENA reported. The sentence was handed down after the Cairo court...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has welcomed the release of a cameraman held by US forces in Iraq, and called on the military to release a freelance journalist working for Reuters who has been held since Tuesday. Omar Husham, 28‎, a cameraman with Baghdad TV‎, a satellite channel owned by the Iraqi Islamic Party, was freed on Friday without charges after one day in custody, according to...

An Iraqi journalist for one of the Middle East's best-known satellite television stations escaped assassination Tuesday when a bomb was found under the seat of his car as he prepared to leave home for work, the Associated Press (AP) reported. The attempt against Jawad al-Hattab, Baghdad bureau manager for Al-Arabiya television, illustrates the dangers facing Iraq despite the decline in violence...

The Egyptian government is increasing its control over the media, especially the broadcast media. Egypt already has a repressive press law and a state of emergency law that has been in effect since 1981. In November, parliament is due to examine a new broadcasting bill that is causing further concern. At the same time, several production companies working with foreign satellite TV stations have...

Prosecutors should drop all charges against Iranian journalist Adnan Hassanpour, whose death sentence was overturned Thursday, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said Friday. A court of appeal overturned the sentence against Adnan Hassanpour, a journalist and former editor for the now-defunct Kurdish-Persian weekly Aso in Iran's northwestern province of Kurdistan, local journalists told...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has expressed alarm at the detention of two Iraqi journalists by the US military in separate incidents and calls on the authorities to make clear any charges against them or release them immediately. Omar Husham, 28, was arrested along with his father and two brothers at his house in the predominantly Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiyah, the Associated Press...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on Iranian authorities to disclose charges against two detained Kurdish journalists or release them immediately. On August 28, security forces arrested Anvar Sa'di Muchashi and his cousin at his home in Sanandaj, the capital of the Kordestan province in northwestern Iran, and took them to an unknown location, local journalists told CPJ. A...