State Impunity

Death threats have been made against TV journalist Farid Alam by the underground Islamist group Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) following the publication of Alam's book Islamic Militancy: Bangladesh Context, according to Reporters sans Frontières. Blamed by JMB for the death sentence imposed on its leader, Alam fled the country and is currently in exile in Europe. The death threats were made...

Mexican radio reporter Luis Daniel Méndez Hernández’s was murdered on February 23 while he was attending the carnival in Huayacocotla, in the southeastern state of Veracruz. The correspondent of “Enlaces Noticias,” a news programme broadcast on several frequencies by the Radiorama Tuxpan news agency, Méndez was shot four times in the back, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). “There are...

Ernesto Rollin, a presenter on local radio DxSY-AM in Ozamiz City, in Misamis Occidental province (on the southern island of Mindanao) was killed on February 23. He was the first journalist to be killed this year in the Philippines, but the 99th since the return to democracy in 1986. Aged about 40, Rollin was gunned down at close range at about 5:30 a.m. in a service station in nearby Oroquieta...

Three defendants in the October 2006 murder of Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovskaya walked free out of the Moscow District Military Court Friday after a jury unanimously acquitted them of helping to organise the crime. The state prosecution said it will appeal the verdict, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reported. Those acquitted are Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, a former police...

The Buenos Aires Supreme Court has reinstated the life imprisonment sentence against former Pinamar police commissioner Alberto Gómez for his involvement in the January 25, 1997 murder of photographer José Luis Cabezas. This ruling revoked a previous decision by an appeals court that had reduced the original life sentence handed down in 2002 to 24 years in prison. The Foro de Periodismo Argentino...

Several journalists of the Reporter, an independent monthly magazine in Burkina Faso, as well as journalist Newton Ahmed Barry of privately-owned weekly newspaper l'Événement have received death threats via e-mail for allegedly criticising three top government officials. In a February 2009 edition of the Reporter, the magazine published a letter from an anonymous source that identified himself as...

A judge in the Philippines has lifted the warrant of arrest he himself had issued against the alleged killers of radio broadcaster Dennis Cuesta. Judge Isaac Alvero Moran, of the Regional Trial Court (RTC) Branch 36, of General Santos City, on February 12 revoked the February 3 warrant of arrest issued against Police Inspector Redempto "Boy" Acharon and several other suspects in the killing of...

Hearings in the murder case of Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovskaya continue at the Moscow District Military Court. On February 4, the judge announced yet another adjournment of the proceedings, this time because of the sudden loss in court of a DVD featuring video materials that the prosecutor wanted to present as evidence against the defendants, the Glasnost Defence Foundation (GDF)...

The South East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO) has expressed deep concern over the attack on private television station TV Alter in Athens, Greece, on February 17. According to SEEMO, around 7:15 p.m., four armed men fired shots and threw a suspected explosive device outside the premises of TV Alter's central offices in Athens. No injuries were reported. The attack happened before the station's...

The Turkish interior minister has announced a new investigation into the role of the security forces in the 2007 murder of journalist of Armenian origin, Hrant Dink, according to delayed reports. Interior minister, Basir Atalay on February 4, following the publication of a report by the prime minister’s services (BTK), ordered the opening of an investigation into the responsibilities and...