Corruption and Crime

Kyrgyz freelance journalist Almazbek Tashiyev’s died in a hospital in the southern city of Osh on July 12 from the injuries he received when he was allegedly beaten up eight days earlier in the nearby town of Nookat by a police officer for unclear reasons. The authorities are investigating. Tashiyev, who was still conscious when admitted to hospital, said he was beaten up by about 10 policemen in...

Colombian police have arrested a man believed to have gunned down veteran radio journalist José Everardo Aguilar in retaliation for his reporting on corruption in southwestern Cauca province, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). On Friday, the Colombian National Police arrested Arley Manquillo Rivera, also known as "El Huracán," at a routine checkpoint outside the provincial...

An unidentified gunman shot and killed Honduran journalist Gabriel Fino Noriega on Friday in the town of San Juan Pueblo, according to local press reports. Noriega, who worked for local radio station Estelar, TV Channel 9, and as a correspondent for national station Radio América in San Juan Pueblo, 217 miles (350 km) north of the capital Tegucigalpa, was gunned down after leaving the radio...

A journalist at an independent Kazakh newspaper says death threats have been rolling in since the publication of an article she wrote exposing a prostitution ring in western Kazakhstan, RFE/RL's Kazakh Service reports. [ Link] Zhanara Davletova, a reporter for the regional Oral Weekly based in the city of Oral, told RFE/RL that she has been getting several phone calls daily from unknown people who...

A Filipino radio presenter, Jonathan Petalvero, was recently shot dead at a restaurant in Bayugan, in the southern province of Agusan del Sur, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Petalvero hosted a programme that supported a local politician. “It is too soon to say whether this murder was linked to the victim’s work as a journalist, but the authorities must quickly assign enough...

Russian newspaper editor Vyacheslav Yaroshenko, who spent weeks in a coma after being attacked and beaten outside his home on April 29, succumbed to his injuries Monday in the southwestern city of Rostov-on-Don. He was 63. Yaroshenko, editor-in-chief of the Rostov-on-Don newspaper Korruptsiya i Prestupnost, was found unconscious with a head wound in the entrance of his apartment building early on...

A Paris court has found Tahiti-Pacifique editor Alex du Prel guilty of defaming public prosecutor Jean Bianconi in an article criticising the judicial probe into the 1997 disappearance of Jean-Pascal “JPK” Couraud, a leading investigative journalist based in Papeete, the capital of French Polynesia, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. The court on Tuesday fined Du Prel 1,000 euros and...

A journalist in Equatorial Guinea, facing a criminal libel charge over a flawed story, was imprisoned on Wednesday, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported, quoting local journalists. Rodrigo Angüe Nguema, a correspondent for Agence France-Presse (AFP) and Radio France Internationale (RFI), was arrested by a plainclothes security agent at a courthouse in the capital...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) is pinning its hopes on the appointment of a new judge on June 3 to conduct the investigation into the death of Magomed Yevloyev, the owner of the Ingushetiya.ru (now Ingushetia.org) news website and opponent of former Ingush President Murat Zyazikov. Yevloyev was shot dead while in police custody in Magas, Ingushetia’s new capital, in August 2008. The appointment...

Five men have been detained in connection with the May 25 killing of Eliseo Barrón Hernández, a reporter and photographer for the local daily La Opinión in the northern Durango state in Mexico. "We are encouraged by the detention of these five men who are reportedly members of a drug cartel," said Carlos Lauría, senior programme coordinator for the Americas, Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)...