State Impunity

Two sports journalists, one South African and one Nigerian, were seized by unidentified gunmen in military uniforms in Nigeria on Monday, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The gunmen stopped a bus carrying 21 crew members of M-Net’s SuperSport channel, a South African private satellite television station, and took the three journalists hostage, local journalists told New...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on the Palestinian Authority (PA) to heed a High Court order and release journalist Tariq Abu Zaid immediately. A four-person special military court in Nablus sentenced Abu Zaid, a correspondent who reported on camera for Hamas-run Al-Aqsa TV, to 18 months in prison on February 16 on charges of "undermining the status of the authority, and...

One month after the disappearance of her husband Prageeth Eknelygoda, the journalist’s wife, Sandhya Eknelygoda , has said that she has not been able to get police or other government officials to actively investigate the case. “I have written to the president and have not gotten a response,” Eknelygoda told the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Our children want their father back, and we...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) and the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ) have expressed grave concern over the fate of Ali Yusuf Adan, a journalist who was arrested on February 21 in an area controlled by the Islamist militia Al-Shabaab. “Al-Shabaab, which we have already classified as a ‘Predator of Press Freedom,’ has added yet another misdeed to the long list of violations of free...

TV reporter Ashiq Ali Mangi has been murdered in the southeastern district of Khairpur in yet another sign of the growing dangers for journalists in Pakistan, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Employed by the privately-owned television station Mehran, Mangi was gunned down as he rode to the local press club in Gambat on a motorcycle on February 17. Sources told RSF that Mangi’s murder...

Iraqi reporter Hussam Daoud al-Eqabi, who was seized by unidentified armed men on Wednesday, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Al-Eqbi is a political reporter for Al-Ahed, a radio station in Kirkuk affiliated with radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr. According to Abed Abu Zahra, head of Al-Ahed, four unidentified gunmen abducted Hussam Dawood al-Eqabi, 22, in front of his...

Mohammed Shu’i Al-Rabu’i, a correspondent for several news media including the opposition newspaper Al-Qahira, was gunned down on February 13 in the district of Beni Qais (in the governorate of Hajja), 120 km northwest of Sana’a, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Those allegedly responsible have already been arrested. “We offer this journalist’s colleagues and family our heartfelt...

Hackers broke into the website of the Turkish and Armenian-language newspaper Agos Thursday and succeeded in posting a photo of Ogün Samast – the youth who is on trial for the January 2007 murder of the newspaper’s founder, Hrant Dink – together with a Turkish flag background and around 10 lines of ultra-nationalistic comments, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Headlined “Our good...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) on Thursday expressed shock at the conditions in which the trial of the alleged killers of Hrant Dink was being held after attending the 12th hearing in the case on February 8. Dink, a Turkish journalist of Armenian origin, was shot dead in Istanbul on January 19, 2007. He was the editor of the bi-lingual Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos and a critic of Turkey’s...

Jorge Ochoa Martínez, a Mexican editor and publisher in Guerrero state, died late Friday after being shot in the face, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said quoting local press reports. Ochoa was killed in the town of Ayutla de los Libres after leaving a birthday party for a local politician, a friend and a coworker told New York-based CPJ. A spokesperson for Guerrero’s governor told...