West Asia - North Africa

A Moroccan court has fined the country's leading newspaper a whopping 6 million dirhams for mistakenly alleging that a judge had attended a gay wedding party in the Muslim country. Rachid Nini, editor of the daily Al-Massae said the paper would appeal the verdict and expressed concern that the authorities were using the courts to try and shut down a troublesome critic, according to Reuters. Last...

Leading Egyptian newspaper editor Ibrahim Eissa has been sentenced to six months in prison for "reporting" on President Hosni Mubarak's health problems. Eissa, editor of Al-Dustour, will post the 200 Egyptian pounds bail (US$40, €25) to avoid serving his sentence while he appeals. "The state has been put at risk," Judge Sherif Kamel Mustafa said in a Cairo court, while reading out the verdict...

Leading Egyptian editor Ibrahim Eissa will Wednesday face charges of publishing "fake news about the president's health which afflicted the national economy." If convicted, Eissa faces up to three years in prison and a fine of as much as 20,000 Egyptian pounds ($3,600). This in the backdrop if the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) condemning the Egyptian government over raids and...

Freedom of expression in Yemen remains in peril. there have been a series of blows to press freedom in the past few days in this peninsular country. Authorities banned distribution of the monthly Abwab and the weekly Al-Sabah on March 14. The website www.aleshteraki.net, the mouthpiece of the main opposition party, has been inaccessible since March 12. At the same time, the daily Al-Sharea, its

Syrian authorities are insisting on having a military tribunal examine charges against journalist Mazen Darwish, head of the Syrian Centre for Media Freedom and Freedom of Expression. He is accused of "libelling and defaming the state's bodies" by publishing a feature report about the January 2008 riots in Damascus, and for criticising the security bodies' failure to protect the citizens killed in...

A Jordanian court has handed down jail terms of three months each on five newspaper journalists, including two prominent editors, for contempt of court and defamation. Editor Taher al-Adwan and reporter Sahar Qassam of the Arabic daily Al-Arab al-Youm, former Ad-Dustour editor Osama Sharif, and Ad-Dustour reporter Fayez Louzi were sentenced Thursday under the penal code to three months in prison...

The first-ever detailed report on the plight of Iraqi journalists who have been forced into exile was released by Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) today, the eve of the fifth anniversary of the start of the US-led invasion of Iraq. Most of these journalists fled to Jordan or Syria after receiving threats or surviving murder attempts. Hundreds are trying to live a normal life again in Amman or...

Yemen banned a new magazine Sunday for publishing a picture of the nation's president deemed "inappropriate" by authorities, the Associated Press (AP) has reported quoting the magazine's editor. Nabil al-Soufi, editor of Abwab, said the security authorities banned the first issue of the magazine because they believed the picture of President Ali Abdullah Saleh on the cover made him look dour....

Iran has closed down nine film and lifestyle magazines for publishing pictures and stories about the life of "corrupt" foreign film stars and promoting "superstitions." The Press Supervisory Board, a body controlled by hardliners, also sent warning notes to 13 other publications and magazines on "observing the provisions of the press law," the Culture Ministry said on its website, acording to an...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has condemned the murder of an Iraqi journalist by at least one unknown gunman in Baghdad on Thursday last. Qassim Abdul Hussein al-Iqabi, 36, of the local daily Al-Muwatin (The Citizen) was shot dead in Baghdad’s predominantly Shiite Karradah neighbourhood, according to local and international news reports. “We offer our deepest condolences to Qassim...