West Asia - North Africa

An Egyptian appeals court on Tuesday overturned a one-year jail term on newspaper editor Ibrahim Issa, convicted of defaming President Hosni Mubarak, and substituted a fine of 22,500 Egyptian pounds ($3,950), according to news reports. Ibrahim Issa, editor-in-chief of the independent Al Dustour weekly newspaper, speaks to the media after an Egyptian appeal court overturned a prison sentence...

Israel Defence Forces (IDF) arrested a local television director and harassed several journalists during a military operation in the West Bank city of Nablus on Monday, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. An Israeli soldier gestures towards the camera during an Israeli military operation in the West Bank City of Nablus February 26, 2007. Israeli forces continued...

(RSF/IFEX) - Hussein Al Zubaydi, a journalist with the weekly "al-Ahali", was killed by gunmen in unclear circumstances in Baghdad on 19 February 2007, while the bullet-riddled body of Abderrazak Hashim Al-Khakani, a journalist with radio Jumhuriyat Al Iraq, was discovered in a Baghdad morgue on 20 February. He had been kidnapped a week earlier in the east Baghdad neighbourhood of al-Jihad...

New York, February 26, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned about the safety of an Iraqi newspaper editor who disappeared in central Baghdad on Saturday. Jamal al-Zubaidi, 56, an economics editor for the Baghdad-based dailies As-Saffir and Al-Dustour, was last seen leaving As-Saffir’s offices in the central Karada neighborhood around 1 p.m. on Saturday, his son Riyah told...

US troops raided the offices of the Iraq Syndicate of Journalists in central Baghdad and arrested armed 10 guards, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has reported. IFJ condemned as “outrageous and inexcusable” the action of American soldiers who carried out an armed raid on the Baghdad offices of the journalists syndicate. Iraq Syndicate of Journalists chairman Shihab al-Timimi...

An Italian judge ordered Wednesday a US soldier to stand trial on homicide charges for shooting dead an Italian intelligence agent in Iraq in 2005 as he was escorting a freed journalist to safety, Reuters has reported. Mario Lozano of the US Army's 69th Infantry Regiment was charged with voluntary homicide for shooting Nicola Calipari at a checkpoint near Baghdad airport. Italian journalist...

BAYSIDE, Texas: Show me the money, or at least some receipts scribbled on the backs of old envelopes and grocery bags. This week, we were treated to the spectacle of the former U.S. civilian overlord of Iraq, Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, squirming in the hot seat as he attempted with little success to explain what he did with 363 TONS of newly printed, shrink-wrapped $100 bills he had flown to...

Sudanese authorities have lifted the ban on independent Arabic daily Al-Sudani imposed on it after the newspaper violated a decree not to report on the case of a murdered journalist, Reuters has reported. The Al- Sudani newspaper, one of the leading dailies in Sudan, has had many problems with the authorities. Erwa's paper was closed down in Sudan under emergency law in 1994. It reopened last year...

(CPJ/IFEX) - New York, February 2, 2007 - The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned that more than a year after Iraqi journalists Marwan Ghazal and Reem Zaeed were abducted by gunmen in Baghdad they remain missing. "The plight of Marwan Ghazal and Reem Zaeed underscores the enormous dangers faced by all journalists covering this conflict, but especially those largely anonymous...

Baghdad: There is good news in Iraq. For our journalists, this week's high points were the safe return of two colleagues seized by a death squad which shot two other hostages and the survival of the teenage nephew of another employee who was kidnapped and tortured in Baghdad. The lows, as I complete nearly two years running the agency's operations in Iraq, were sending condolences to the family of...