West Asia - North Africa

Iranian authorities expelled Hassan Fahs, the chief of Al Arabiya news television station's Tehran bureau Tuesday after revoking his media accreditation, the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) has reported. According to Al Arabiya's website, a documentary film about Iran aired under the title "The Road to The Revolution" may be the motive behind this decision. The new Iranian...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has voiced deep shock and sadness at the death of the sister of journalist Sadeq Jaafar Bashir, sub-editor on the Kurdish monthly review Araa (Opinions), who was gunned down in a murder attempt against him at his home in Baghdad. According to Paris-based RSF, 217 journalists and media assistants have been killed in Iraq since the start of the war in March 2003...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reiterated its appeal to Palestinian political leaders to put an end to a wave of arrests of journalists. At least four are currently detained in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the press freedom organisation calls for their release. "The political struggle between Hamas and Fatah has inflicted a great deal of damage on the press in the Palestinian Territories...

Iranian journalist Yosef Azizi Banitruf has been sentenced to five years in jail after he exposed excessive use of force against demonstrators from the Arab community who clashed with security forces in Khuzestan in south-west Iran, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. The trial of Azizi Banitruf, a member of Iran's Arab minority, was held over almost two years. The Tehran revolutionary...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has welcomed the release of a Reuters cameraman held by US forces in Iraq for three weeks without charge, and it called on the military to charge or release an Associated Press journalist who has been held since June. Ali al-Mashhadani, 39, was freed thursday, Reuters reported. He had been arrested on July 29 in Baghdad by US military forces while he was...

Hamas has allowed a Palestinian newspaper to be distributed in Gaza Strip and kept the ban on two others, according to a Xinhua report. Hassan Abu Hashish, director of the Hamas' governmental press office, said the ban on the Jerusalem-based al-Quds daily was lifted "after the newspaper's directors pledged to remain professional and objective in their coverage of the events in Gaza Strip." Abu...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned the requirements imposed on foreign journalists by Hezbollah in the areas it controls in Lebanon. Press accreditation issued by the Lebanese information ministry is of no use in Hezbollah-controlled areas, where journalists must obtain permission from the party's press bureau. Three Brazilian journalists - reporter Marcos Losékan and cameraman Paulo...

The Israeli army raided and closed down three Palestinian radio stations on Wednesday, according to the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ). IFJ has demanded a full inquiry into the military crackdown on three radio networks operating out of the city of Hebron which provoked new demonstrations by Palestinian journalists across the West Bank and Gaza. "Sending the army into media houses...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has written to Yemeni interior minister Mutahar Rashad Al-Masri calling for the immediate release of two brothers, Ali Nasser Kaid Al-Bokheiti and Mohammed Ahmed Hassan Al-Bokheiti, who were arrested on July 21 at a military roadblock with a British freelance journalist for whom they working as fixers. The British journalist was deported the same day. They have been...

The government of South Korea has ordered home documentary filmmaker Kim Young Me from Iraq, where she was on assignment, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has eported. Kim returned to Seoul on August 9, after leaving Iraq on August 3. She had been embedded with American forces in Iraq's dangerous Diyala province, when US military authorities were told she did not have her...