Corruption and Crime

The car of an investigative journalist, Enrico Porsia, was bombed in the early hours of Wednesday outside the house in Conca, near the southern Corsican town of Porto-Vecchio, where he is staying while on vacation, Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. The explosion caused considerable damage to the car but no injuries. An Italian national who was once a member of the Red Brigades, Porsia...

Former police officers Odin Fernandes da Silva and Davi Liberato de Araújo were convicted for being part of the militia that abducted and tortured a team of journalists from O Dia newspaper in the Batan Favela area, Rio de Janeiro, in May 2008. Judge Alexandre Abrahão sentenced both individuals to 31 years in prison on August 12, according to Associação Brasileira de Jornalismo de Investigação...

A Ljubljana district court on August 6 banned the daily Dnevnik from mentioning Italian businessman Pierpaolo Cerani as controversial or involved in corruption scandals, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Dnevnik can report about him only in positive way, without mentioning his involvement in former scandals until there has been an outcome to the libel suit he has brought against the...

The Kazakh supreme court has upheld the two-year ban that a court in the southern city of Taraz imposed on the weekly Alma Ata Info on August 8 at the same time as it sentenced its editor, Ramazan Esergepov, to three years in prison, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. “This disgraceful sentence should have been quashed because of all the irregularities during the trial,” Paris-based RSF...

A three-year jail sentence has been passed by a court in the southern city of Taraz passed on Ramazan Esergepov, the owner and editor of the Kazakh weekly Alma Ata Info, on charges of gathering and divulging classified documents under articles 172 and 339 of the Kazakh criminal code, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. The trial, which ended on August 8 with Esergepov also being banned...

A BBC journalist who went undercover to expose failings in care for the elderly has been arrested. Arifa Farooq was detained on Wednesday and held in a police cell in the wake of a Panorama investigation into care providers in South Lanarkshire, a BBC report said. Some details: [ Link] It is believed her arrest is related to an alleged failure to provide accurate personal details to the employer...

Some twenty lawyers of the Lahore Bar Association (LBA) attacked reporter Shaheen Attiq and cameraman Mohammed Nasir of private television channel City-42 Thursday last for airing footage of the lawyers beating a policeman a day earlier outside the premises of the Sessions Court, in Lahore, the capital city of the Punjab province. According to the Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF), Nasir and Attiq...

Forensics experts in Ukraine are trying to identify fragments of a human skull found in the Bilotserkivski district of Kyiv Oblast, Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) has reported. The investigators suspect that the remains are those of independent journalist Heorhiy Gongadze, who was abducted and beheaded by unknown assailants in 2000. Gongadze, known for his criticism of the Ukrainian...

Unidentified individuals harassed and attacked journalists working at the Tegucigalpa offices of the online daily Hondudiario.com three times in two weeks, the Committee for Protection of Journalists (CPJ) has reported quoting local journalists and news reports. Though the attacks appeared to be robberies, the daily's director told CPJ he believed they were retaliation for the Hondudiario.com's...

Following a vicious attack on a cameraman for the La Paz-based television network Gigavisión outside the station's offices early Saturday morning, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on Bolivian authorities to thoroughly investigate and bring those responsible to justice. At 6 a.m. on Saturday, two people pushed Marcelo Lobo into an alley near his offices and hit him repeatedly...