The Committee to Protect Journalists has expressed concern over the attack Monday evening on Namal Perera, freelance journalist and deputy head of the Sri Lanka Press Institute (SLPI), a media rights advocacy group. Perera was attacked by men with iron bars in Colombo while travelling in a car with a British diplomatic official, according to international news reports. Perera is recovering from...
Sri Lankan media owners Wednesday offered a cash reward to catch assailants involved in an attack on a journalist, while the country's media protested against the increasing wave of violence against them, says a Reuters report. A defence analyst attached to Sri Lanka Press Institute (SLPI), along with a British High Commission official, was brutally assaulted on Monday, prompting media groups to...
Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned the abusive behaviour by Israeli security agents towards Palestinian journalists moving around the Territories or returning from visits abroad. Paris-based RSF says it has recorded five incidents of wrongful arrest over a recent 10-day period. One journalist is still being held, while another needed hospital treatment after being subjected to brutality...
The man suspected of killing Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya in 2006 is hiding in Western Europe, Russia's chief criminal investigator said Tuesday, according to Reuters. Some details: "According to our information, the murderer is hiding in Western Europe," Alexander Bastrykin, the head of the Prosecutor-General's investigation unit, was quoted as saying by Interfax news agency. "We even...
Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned the arrest of journalist Ahmed Al-Majoun in a raid by US and Iraqi soldiers on his home in Tikrit (180 km north of Baghdad) early on June 24. His son was also arrested. Majoun heads a journalists union based in Salah El Din, the province of which Tikrit is the capital. No reason has been given for their arrests. "We are disturbed to see that, just a...
Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has welcomed the "transparency" of a US Defence Department report released on June 16 confirming that US soldiers were responsible for the fatal shooting of Reuters soundman Waleed Khaled in Baghdad on August 28, 2005. Khaled drove with Reuters cameraman Haider Kadhem to the Baghdad district of Al-Adil to cover a situation in which an Iraqi police unit had been...
British journalist Sean Langan has been released after being abducted and held in Afghanistan for three months by a group associated with the Taliban, the Press Associaiton (PA) has reported. The freelance reporter was working for the Channel 4 programme Dispatches when he was abducted on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Some details: A spokesman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office...
Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has deplored the Niamey public prosecutor's decision to file an immediate appeal against an investigating judge's June 23 decision to allow detained journalist Moussa Kaka to be released provisionally. The appeal blocked the release of Kaka, who continues to be held in a Niamey prison. The director of privately-owned Radio Saraounia and the Niger correspondent of...
Twenty-nine global media organisations have appealed to the United Nations to put pressure on Sri Lanka to protect journalists, who have been described as "enemies of the state" for being critical of the government's role in the civil war in the country. The media organisations affiliated to the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) said in a letter to UN Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon that...
Colombian journalist Mario Alberto Puello was freed from captivity on June 19 by members of the National Liberation Army (Ejercito de Liberación Nacional, ELN) guerrilla group. ELN members handed Puello, who was abducted on February 17 in La Guajira department, over to International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) personnel, according to Fundación para la Libertad de Prensa (FLIP). Puello and...
