West Asia - North Africa

Suspended prison sentences have been passed on Iranian journalists Said Matinpour and Yaghoub Salaki Nia in separate cases. Matinpour's jail term was eight years. Nia's was one year. In each case, the sentences were handed down in closed door hearings without their lawyers being present, Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Both plan to appeal. At the same time, RSF has...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has called for the news media that have been closed in the Palestinian territories since the start of the clashes to be allowed to resume operating. "No fewer that 17 news media have been forced to stop working since June 2007, when Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian Authority withdrew to the West Bank," the press freedom organisation said....

A six-year jail sentence has been handed down to an outspoken Yemeni journalist accused of conspiring with anti-government rebels. A state security court in Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, Monday sentenced Abdel Karim al-Khaiwani, editor of an opposition news website, to six years in prison for being an alleged member of a cell of anti-government rebels and conspiring to carry out attacks on government...

Three years after the murder of Franco-Lebanese journalist Samir Kassir in Beirut, French and Lebanese judicial authorities continue to be slow and callous in their response in this case in which no suspect has been detained or charged. Kassir’s widow, Giselle Khoury, has almost given up as she says, "Resolution seems to me to be very far away, too far. The many political changes, not only in

There has been an upsurge in legal proceedings against members of the Algerian news media as the trial of three journalists on the daily Liberté ended with the state prosecutor making an outrageous call for jail sentences against them. The prosecutor on Sunday called for two months imprisonment for editor, Ali Ouafak, managing editor, Farid Alilat, and cartoonist Ali Dilem for “defamation” under...

A cameraman employed by public television station Al-Iraqiya, was seriously injured Tuesday in the bombing of a musical instruments shop in the old part of Basra, 550 km south of Baghdad, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Odai Sabri was rushed unconscious, with multiple injuries to head and body, to a hospital where he underwent an operation to remove some of the bomb fragments....

ANHRI has condemned the persistence of Egyptian Islamist preacher Sheikh Wajdi Ghunaim in his continuous harassment of the Bahraini newspaper Al-Ayam, and his prosecution of Eisa Al Shayji, the newspaper's editor-in-chief, and journalist-writer Saeed Al-Hamad. Ghunaim is suing the journalists for alleged slander before the Criminal Court. Ghunaim—an Egyptian preacher expelled from Bahrain in...

Two Iraqi journalists were killed in separate incidents this week. Wisam Ali Ouda, a cameraman for the Afaq television station, was shot as he walked home in the Obaidi district of Baghdad on Wednesday morning, Reuters reported. The station’s public relations head Bushra Abdul-Amir told Reuters that witnesses said Ouda was shot by an “American sniper.” Station secretary Ghufran al-Bakri told the...

Police auxiliaries assaulted Rafael Marchante, a Spanish photographer employed by the British news agency Reuters, while he was covering a demonstration by jobless university graduates outside parliament in Rabat on May 21. "This is not the first time the security forces have attacked a journalist while dispersing demonstrators," Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières said in a statement. "The fact...

Two Iraqi journalists were killed in separate incidents this week. Wisam Ali Ouda, a cameraman for the Afaq television station, was shot as he walked home in the Obaidi district of Baghdad on Wednesday morning, Reuters reported. The station's public relations head, Bushra Abdul-Amir, told Reuters that witnesses said Ouda was shot by an "American sniper." Station secretary Ghufran al-Bakri told the...