West Asia - North Africa

The Committee to Protect Journalists has called on the United States to release Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi photojournalist for The Associated Press, who has been held in a U.S. prison in Iraq for a year without charge. Hussein, a Pulitzer Prize winner, was taken by U.S. forces on April 12 in the western city of Ramadi, the capital of Iraq’s Anbar province, and held in a U.S. prison in Iraq for...

April 10, 2007 | It's no secret that the period of time between 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq represents one of the greatest collapses in the history of the American media. Every branch of the media failed, from daily newspapers, magazines and Web sites to television networks, cable channels and radio. I'm not going to go into chapter and verse about the media's specific failures, its...

BAGHDAD, 9 April 2007 (IRIN) - BAGHDAD, 9 April 2007 (IRIN) - The arrests, abductions and murders of journalists in Iraq are severely limiting the ability of media outlets to effectively report the escalating humanitarian crises in the war-torn country, specialists say. In the run-up to the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad, on 9 April, media associations are calling on the government and...

Punitive judicial sanctions are threatening Morocco’s independent press. Over the last two years, Moroccan courts have levied stiff criminal penalties and civil damages against independent news publications, effectively banishing two of the country’s most outspoken journalists from their profession. In January 2007, a Moroccan court handed down three-year suspended prison sentences to Driss Ksikes...

The fourth anniversary of the still unexplained killing of three journalists by US troops in Baghdad was marked Sunday by a preceding week of shocking attacks on journalists in Iraq. Four journalists were killed during the week. Thursday last saw the brutal murder of Khamaail Mohsin, a mother of three and journalist with Radio Free Iraq, the US-funded Radio station in Arabic, and the bombing of...

In a continued effort to suppress reform-minded critics, the Iranian government has sentenced yet another prominent journalist, Ali Farahbakhsh, to three years in jail and slapped him with a huge fine, partly due to a typo in the court documents. Farahbakhsh was convicted of spying in a trial held behind closed doors on Mar. 26. He was first imprisoned five months ago on his return to Iran after...

NEW YORK In a remarkable op-ed column, published today in the Charlotte Observer and by several other newspapers across the country over the past eight days, Stephen E. Wright, editorial page editor of the San Jose Mercury News, describes sending his 18-year-old son off to Iraq this month -- and calls it "the wrong war." Wright says that his son is part of the "surge" of troops to Iraq, adding...

Reporters Without Borders called today for the immediate release of freelance business journalist Ali Farahbakhsh, who was convicted of spying in a parody of a trial on 26 March and was sentenced to three years in prison and an exorbitant fine. “The same day that the UN Human Rights Council decided not to examine the situation in Iran, a journalist was the victim of the Islamic Republic’s...

BBC correspondent Alan Johnston began Monday his third week in captivity in the Gaza Strip wven as efforts were stepped up to secure his release. Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) urged leaders attending an Arab League summit on March 28-29 in Saudi Arabia to issue a joint appeal for his release. BBC Middle East Bureau Editor Simon Wilson, right, listens to BBC Gaza correspondent Fayed Abu Shammala...

Reporters Without Borders today learned of the death of two Iraqi journalists at the hands of armed groups in Baghdad, bringing to 155 the number of media staff killed in Iraq since the start of the conflict in March 2003. The worldwide press freedom organisation on 16 March held a protest in Paris in which 153 activists and volunteers held up photos of 153 leading French journalists behind a...