Corruption and Crime

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned the arrests of Moussa Aksar, the editor-in-chief of the privately-owned weekly L'Evénement, and one of his journalists, Sani Aboubacar on a charge of libelling the head of the state power company. Their arrests on November 12 came a day after another newspaper editor got a three-month suspended sentence after 12 days in pre-trial custody. "What redress...

The editor-in-chief of a small and vocal opposition newspaper in the Moscow suburbs, who fought a campaign to protect a forest from destruction by real-estate developers, is in critical condition after being assaulted and beaten outside his home. Mikhail Beketov, editor-in-chief of the Khimkinskaya Pravda newspaper, was found unconscious after being badly beaten on Thursday near his home in the...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has expressed dismay at former Bulgarian interior minister Rumen Petkov's public insult of journalist Jurgen Roth and call for violence against him less than a month after Ognyan Stefanov, the editor of the news website Frognews, was seriously injured in a murder attempt. “We are outraged by Rumen Petkov’s irresponsible comments,” Paris-based RSF said. “His call for...

Veteran Mexican crime reporter Armando Rodríguez was shot to death Thursday morning while in his car in the border city of Ciudad Juárez, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. An unidentified assailant shot Rodríguez, 40, a reporter for the local daily El Diario, at least eight times with a 9mm weapon, according to Mexican news reports and CPJ interviews. Rodríguez was sitting...

Zakari Alzouma, the editor the independent weekly Opinions, was released Tuesday, but given a three-month suspended prison sentence for supposedly libelling interior minister Albadé Abouba, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Alzouma was arrested on October 30 in response to a complaint by the interior minister about an article reporting that he “took advantage” of Prime Minister Seini...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has hailed the arrests of suspects in the fatal shootings of two provincial correspondents of the Bangkok-based daily Matichon—Jaruek Rangcharoen on September 27 in the central province of Suphan Buri and Ahiwat Chainurat on August 1 in the southern city of Nakhon Si Thammarat. “The arrests of two suspects in each of these murders suggest that the police are making...

Ghanaian journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas and US freelancer Nicholas Schmidle have been named the winners of the 7th annual Kurt Schork Awards in International Journalism. Anas and Schmidle beat dozens of other reporters around the world with their entries selected by a panel of international judges which included Ben Brown BBC TV Special Correspondent, Christina Lamb of the Sunday Times, Roy...

A car bomb killed Ivo Pukanic, a prominent Croatian journalist, and a colleague in downtown Zagreb on Thursday. State-run Croatian TV showed footage of Pukanic's burned out Lexus and two covered bodies outside his NCL Media Group office in the capital. The police identified the victims as Pukanic and his group's marketing director, Niko Franjic. They published the Zagreb-based political weekly...

Murder charges have been filed in the 2005 slaying of investigative reporter Marlene Garcia-Esperat in the Philippines, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. Osmeña Montañer and Estrella Sabay were charged Monday as the alleged masterminds behind the murder. Montañer and Sabay were Mindano Department of Agriculture officials who Garcia-Esperat had accused of siphoning off money...

The International Press Institute (IPI) has expressed concern at the Slovenian government’s use of diplomatic pressure in response to corruption allegations made in an episode of the Finnish investigative documentary "MOT". According to IPI, the Slovenian government has been using diplomatic channels to exert pressure on the Finnish government following the broadcast on September 1, 2008 of an...