A charge of publishing false information, that was brought against Al-Jazeera Rabat bureau chief Hassan Rachidi on June 13, quickly followed by the immediate withdrawal of his press accreditation without waiting for him to be tried, have been described as "excessive" by the Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Rachidi is to be prosecuted for quoting a human rights group's claim that protesters were...
Iraqi journalist Mohiddin Abdulhamid al-Nakib, gunned down Tuesday outside his home in the northern city of Mosul, 370 km north of Baghdad, according to the Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). His death brings to 216 the number of media workers killed in Iraq since the start of the war in March 2003, 12 per cent of whom have died in Mosul, the country's second most dangerous city for...
US soldiers who killed a Reuters journalist in Iraq acted within military rules, but the Army's probe of the incident was tainted by its failure to preserve evidence, a Pentagon investigation said on Monday. The Defense Department's inspector general, the Pentagon's watchdog agency, found that U.S. soldiers who fired on a Reuters car in west Baghdad in August 2005, killing Reuters Television...
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has urged authorities to drop charges against Hassan Rachidi, the head of Al-Jazeera's bureau in Morocco, accused of broadcasting false information and conspiracy. IFJ said in a statement Monday that it believed the court case, stemming from Al-Jazeera reporting incorrectly on Saturday that there had been deaths during protests in the south-western...
Traditional authorities in Swaziland continue to harass and intimidate the media, particularly in instances when the Swazi monarchy faces criticism, according to the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA). On June 14, the traditional governor, Jim Gama, who is regarded as the traditional prime minister, launched a scathing attack on the print media and threatened journalists for what he claimed...
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...
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s cabinet Friday unanimously approved a bill that would restrict the use of phone taps to investigations of crimes carrying prison terms of at least 10 years and would impose heavy fines or jail terms on journalists and news media that publish transcripts of phone taps without a judge’s permission. “There would seem to be ulterior motives to this bill as it...
Suspended prison sentences have been passed on Iranian journalists Said Matinpour and Yaghoub Salaki Nia in separate cases. Matinpour's jail term was eight years. Nia's was one year. In each case, the sentences were handed down in closed door hearings without their lawyers being present, Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Both plan to appeal. At the same time, RSF has...
The European Court of Human Rights has found Greece guilty of violating freedom of expression by convicting the daily I Avgi and its editor, Konstantinos Karis, of libel in 2003 for describing former journalist Kyriakos Velopoulos as a “known out-an-out nationalist” in a June 2000 article, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Velopoulos, who was elected last year as a parliamentary...
The criminal case against Andrei Dumler, the head of the information agency Baikal Media Consulting (BMK), has been thrown out of court, the Moscow-based Centre for Journalism in Extreme Situations (CJES) has reported. The journalist was charged with slandering the department of the Federal Service for the Enforcement of Punishments (UFSIN) for the Republic of Buryatia. In November 2007, a report...
