State Impunity

Caslav Milisavljevic, Editor-in-Chief of Radio Kosovska Mitrovica, was attacked in the Kosovo municipality of Zvecan, the South East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO) has reported. According to information received by SEEMO, during the early morning hours of July 20, an explosive device was thrown in the courtyard of Milisavljevic's home. The device exploded, causing damage to three automobiles...

Vijay Pratap Singh, The Indian Express Senior Reporter who was injured in the blast outside an Uttar Pradesh minister's house in Allahabad on July 12, succumbed to his injuries on Tuesday. He would have turned 39 on July 30. He is survived by his wife Shashi, five-year-old son Yash and 10-month-old daughter Adya. Singh was among seven people injured in a bomb attack aimed at UP Institutional...

The 14th hearing in the trial of the men accused of the January 2007 murder of Hrant Dink, a journalist of Armenian origin, has been completed. During the latest hearing, held on July 12, the Dink family’s lawyers filed a request for the prosecution of several senior officials and leading nationalists, including: Ergun Güngör, former deputy governor of Istanbul Özer Yilmaz, former deputy chief of...

Nigerian gunmen who abducted four journalists in the country's oil-rich south a week ago released the group Sunday from an ordeal that one of them described later as "traumatic". The captors dumped the four unhurt in a forest in a remote area of Abia State, a government official said, as police and a journalists' union said no ransom was paid. "They dragged us about in the bush and blindfolded us...

Those responsible for Zahra Kazemi's death have enjoyed complete impunity for the past seven years, thanks in part to the silence and passivity of the international bodies that are supposed to protect human rights. Mistreatment, rape and torture are common in Iranian prisons. Those behind the murders of prisoners, such as former Tehran prosecutor general Sayeed Mortazavi, continue to hold

Dauda Mohammed, a newspaper photographer in Ghana who was reportedly abducted on July 12 by unidentified men for taking pictures of a private mansion of former president Jerry John Rawlings, reportedly escaped from his abductors, after about an hour in detention, according to the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA). Mohammed, a reporter for the privately-owned newspaper The Insight, told Accra...

In the year since former journalist Natalia Estemirova’s abduction and murder on July 15, 2009 in the Russian Caucasus, little progress has been made in the investigation. The impunity that prevails in cases of violence against journalists and human rights activists in Russia seems to have triumphed again. No suspect has yet been identified and key questions remain unanswered. Estemirova’s

Gunmen abducted three prominent Nigerian journalists and a driver traveling through the country's oil-rich, but volatile southern delta, a colleague said Monday, the latest troubling sign of insecurity in the West African nation, according to Associated Press (AP). The reporters had just left a conference in Akwa Ibom state Sunday afternoon and were forced to stop their bus by a speeding car...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on Russian authorities to disclose their progress in the investigation into the unsolved murder of Forbes Russia Editor Paul Klebnikov, left, who was gunned down outside his Moscow office six years ago on July 9 (2004). The case is with the federal Investigative Committee at the Prosecutor-General’s Office, which is responsible for conducting...

Spain's Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered the reopening of a probe into the death of a Spanish journalist who was hit by US tank fire in Iraq in 2003, the Associated Press (AP) has reported. A spokeswoman said the Supreme Court had accepted an appeal by the family of cameraman Jose Couso and ordered the lower National Court to reopen the investigation into his death. Couso was one of two...