West Asia - North Africa

Reporters Without Borders today deplored a two-year prison sentence imposed on a provincial newspaper journalist, as well as the closure of a weekly paper and a ban on two journalists from leaving the country. “The Iranian press and its journalists continue to be the victims of injustice and four are currently in prison,” the worldwide press freedom organisation said. “Many are hounded at their...

Israeli army Tuesday conducted raids on five Palestinian radio and TV stations in West Bank city Nablus, according to news reports. Some of the stations have stopped broadcasting because the soldiers removed the necessary equipment. “There was no justification for these raids and, even less so, for the confiscation of transmitting equipment from these stations,” Reporters sans Frontières (RSF)...

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders has condemned the 20 May 2007 murder in Baghdad of Ali Khalil, of the daily "al-Zaman" ("Time"), and the kidnapping on 9 May of the journalist Salam Duhi al-Sudani. "Less than three days after the death of two journalists working for the US television network ABC, the profession is once again in mourning for this murder," the worldwide press freedom...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Militants kidnapped and killed a journalist from one of Iraq's most popular national newspapers in southern Baghdad on Sunday, his employers said on Monday. Ali Khalil had become a father only a few days before he was killed, they said. He was the 105th journalist to be killed in Iraq since hostilities started four years ago. Khalil, 21, worked for the Azzaman newspaper and had...

MADRID, Spain – Prosecutors on Friday appealed a judge's decision to charge three U.S. soldiers with homicide in the death of a Spanish journalist in Iraq, a court official said. Prosecutors at the National Court said the troops from the U.S. 3rd Infantry, based in Fort Stewart, Ga., committed no crime when their tank fired a shell at Baghdad's Palestine Hotel in 2003, killing Jose Couso, a...

The police fired warning shots at the scene of a double bombing Tuesday, enforcing an order banning news photographers and TV camera operators from filming the aftermath of deadly bombings, the Associated Press (AP) has reported. The Iraqi government said it decided last weekend to keep photographers and camera crews away from blast sites to prevent them from damaging forensic evidence. Press...

Two pominent reformist newspapers in Iran that had been banned resumed publishing this week. One of the papers, Hammihan (Compatriot), was banned in 2000 by the hardline judiciary after it called for improved ties with the United States, the Associated Press (AP) reported. On Sunday, the paper was back on the newsstands, and its top story — with the headline "Iran-US talks in Baghdad" — was on an...

The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the recent arrests of four Iranian student editors of Amirkabir University of Technology in Tehran following the publication of newsletters carrying articles deemed insulting to Islam. The students say they had no involvement in the publications, calling them a fraud designed to disrupt student elections. All of the university's student publications...

NEW YORK, May 14 (Reuters) - A U.S. soldier being tried in absentia in Rome for killing an Italian intelligence agent in Iraq said on Monday that he did nothing wrong and blamed the death on an Italian reporter who was rescued by the agent. Washington has refused to hand over Mario Lozano, from the U.S. National Guard in New York, so he is on trial in absentia for killing Nicola Calipari as the...

A journalist and a media worker were shot dead Sunday in a renewal of clashes between Fatah and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Gunmen wearing presidential guard uniforms stopped a taxi carrying Suleiman Abdul-Rahim al-Ashi, 25, an economics editor for the Hamas-affiliated daily Filistin ( Palestine), and Mohammad Matar Abdo, 25, a manager responsible for distribution and civic relations, Editor-in-Chief...