Ethics and Freedom

Four Radio Benghazi journalists who worked on a programme that specialises in covering corruption were arrested Wednesday evening outside the station in Benghazi (650 km east of Tripoli) and were released at midday Thursday, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) reported. Their arrests come amid a general crackdown by the Libyan authorities on news media, especially independent news websites. “We firmly...

Simon Hervé Nko’o and Serge Sabouang, two journalists who were arrested by members of the General Directorate for External Investigation (DGRE) on February 5 without any reason being given, were finally released on the evening of February 12, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF).

A court in Diyarbakir, the largest city in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast, has passed a 21-year jail sentence on Ozan Kilinç, the owner and editor of the country’s only Kurdish-language daily, Azadiya Welat, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. After finding Kilinç guilty of criminal propaganda in support of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), the court sentenced him in...

There have been renewed cases of threats and physical violence against Bulgarian journalists in the past few days, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). An assault on TV reporter Dimitar Varbanov on February 10 and a police spokesman’s threats against news agency reporter Ivan Yanev in the city of Stara Zagora on February 8 show that a climate of intimidation continues. These incidents and...

Mallam Tukur, the editor-in-chief and publisher of the independent weekly, Desert Herald, based in Kaduna State of Nigeria has been arrested for defamation, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Two plainclothes police arrested Tukur on defamation charges at his office in Kaduna on February 8 and took him to a police station in Bauchi State. He was released on bail the following...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) on Friday called on the Costa Rican legislature to remove criminal defamation provisions from its penal code after a recent Supreme Court decision eliminated prison terms from its 1902 Printing Press Law. The provisions were eliminated from the Printing Press Law—known as Ley de Imprenta—which imposed prison sentences of up to 120 days for defamation in...

A state security court prosecutor in Amman on Thursday ordered newspaper columnist Mwaffaq Mahadin and Sufian Tell, a specialist in environmental issues, held for 15 days for criticising the assistance which the Jordanian intelligence services provide the United States in its fight against Al-Qaeda, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Mahadin, who writes for the daily Al-Arab Al-Yawm...

Ten journalists who went to cover a major Israeli military operation in the Shu’fat refugee camp, in East Jerusalem, were targeted by Israeli soldiers firing tear-gas grenades, stun grenades and rubber bullets on February 8 and 9, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Many journalists were wounded while covering the Israeli search and arrest operation in the refugee camp on February 8. As...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has voiced relief at the release Wednesday of photographer Umida Akhmedova but expressed dismayed at the “extremely dangerous precedent” set by the Tashkent court which found her guilty of “slander” and “insulting the Uzbek people”. The court convicted her only two days into her trial but immediately released her on the grounds that she was eligible under an amnesty...

A court court in the Almaty district of Medeu rescinded the order it issued a week earlier banning all of the Kazakh media from publishing any information that could damage the reputation of President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s son-in-law, businessman Timur Kulibayev. The Medeu district court issued the ban on February 1 in response to the legal action which Kulibayev brought against four independent...