Corruption and Crime

Odnei Fernando da Silva, the civilian police inspector who is accused of heading the militia that kidnapped and tortured two O Dia journalists and their driver in Rio de Janeiro's Batan favela on May 14, surrendered to the authorities on June 16. Also known as "01", "Dinei" and "Águia", Da Silva went with his lawyer to the headquarters of the Department for Repression of Criminal Actions and...

The trial of the alleged killers of Carlos Quispe Quispe, a journalist on Radio Municipal Pucarani opened Wednesday. The journalist died in Pucarani, in La Paz department, western Bolivia on March 29 after being beaten up by opponents of the mayor. The six defendants, charged with "homicide" and "association to commit a crime", were all in court for the opening of the trial: four municipal...

For more than 40 years, the Mafia has been targeting journalists who try to expose the organisation's criminal activities, says an Italian media watchdog. In a new report, the Italian-based rights group Information Safety and Freedom (ISF) says that nine journalists have been murdered by the mafia since 1960, from Cosimo Cristina who was killed in Sicily in 1960 to Beppe Alfano in 1993. Many other

Police in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek raided the newsroom of independent newspaper De-Facto on June 14, taking all its financial records, confiscating computers, and sealing the newsroom, the independent regional news website Ferghana has reported. The paper was shut down after it published a letter to Kyrgyzstan’s president and other public officials that alleged official corruption. The raid...

A criminal bench of the Superior Court of Justice in Áncash on Friday last acquitted Moisés Julca Orrillo, accused of murdering journalist Antonio de la Torre Echeandía on February 14, 2004. According to the Bench's ruling, there is evidence of guilt but no conclusive proof against Julca Orrillo, therefore the presumption of his innocence had to prevail, according to Instituto Prensa y Sociedad...

Fátima Monterrosa, an investigative journalist for the Mexican magazine Emeequis, has been subjected to threats after publishing an article entitled "A Viceroyalty Named Tlaxcala". The article exposed a series of anomalies in the administration of the state government of Tlaxcala. The work of Monterrosa is well known in the journalistic community in Mexico. She has worked as a press correspondent...

Mohamed Nema Oumar, the publisher of the privately-owned, Arabic-language weekly Al-Houriya, was released on the evening of June 13 after being held for 30 hours in a police station in the Nouakchott district of Tevragh Zeina, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). He was charged two days later with "libel and insult" and was ordered to report to the police twice a week pending trial...

A Colombian journalist has been threatened and asked not to distribute his magazine in a remote town, according to the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ). On June 14, at 2:20 p.m. (local time) in the national capital, Bogotá, journalist Pedro Antonio Cárdenas was stopped by two men travelling on a motorcycle. After pointing a revolver at him, they threw him to the ground and beat him up...

The Free Media Movement (FMM) has expressed alarm that another well-known journalist has received a death threat from an unknown caller. Former deputy editor of the Sunday Leader, editor of the monthly magazine Montage and leading investigative journalist and South Asia cocoordinator of the International News Safety Institute (INSI) Frederica Jansz received the death threat at on June 14. The...

Another well-known journalist in Sri Lanka received a death threat Saturday morning from an unknown caller. Former deputy editor of the Sunday Leader, editor of the monthly magazine Montage and leading investigative journalist and South Asia co-coordinator of the International News Safety Institute (INSI) Frederica Jansz received the death threat at approximately 11:30 a.m. The Free Media Movement...