State Impunity

The man behind the 2000 murder of a prominent Mozambican investigative journalist escaped for the third time from custody on Sunday with the help of his prison guards, Reuters has reported quoting Interior Minister Jose Pacheco. Anibal dos Santos was serving a 30-year prison sentence for his involvement in the gangland shooting of Carlos Cardoso, who was slain while probing a $14 million...

Citing the examination of “classified” material evidence, the presiding judge in the Anna Politkovskaya murder case trial again barred on Thursday the press and public from the hearing. The trial was re-opened for both on Friday. A witness testifying in the trial said on Friday that a bounty of $2 million was paid to carry out the killing. Lom-Ali Gaitukayev, who had previously served 12 years in...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has welcomed the action of a British coroner investigating the killing of a journalist in Somalia who called on BBC to ensure journalists are never put under pressure to go on dangerous missions. Coroner Dr Peter Dean said he would be writing to BBC to stress that managers must recognise staff had an overriding right to turn down dangerous jobs...

The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) has urged newspaper readers throughout the Americas to sign an open letter to Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva calling on him to have light shed on the death of television programme host José Carlos Mesquita on March 10, 1998 in Ouro Preto do Oeste, Rondônia, Brazil. Mesquita had exposed drug trafficking and misuse of funds intended for the...

A Russian judge has lifted a ban on journalists covering the trial of three men accused of helping to murder journalist and Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya even as prosecutors asked for his removal over his flip-flops on media coverage. Judge Yevgeny Zubov ruled last week that the politically charged trial would be held behind closed doors, drawing fierce criticism from Politkovskaya's family...

A member of the Anna Politkovskaya murder trial jury has denied that the jury had asked for the press and public to be excluded, saying it was the clerk of the court who asked them to sign a statement to this effect which they had not drafted. The jury member said this in an interview to independent radio station Echo Moskvy, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Juror Yevgeny Kolesov told...

A Moscow court has reversed an earlier decision and barred the public and media from the trial of four men accused of murdering journalist Anna Politkovskaya, Yevgeny Zubov, the presiding judge in the trial of four men for the 2006 murder of Novaya Gazeta reporter Anna Politkovskaya, Wednesday ruled that the press and public will henceforth be excluded, reversing the decision he took on the first...

Four men went on trial Monday in connection with the murder of Russian journalist and outspoken Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya, despite the failure of the authorities to catch the masterminds. The four have been charged with helping organise the October 2006 shooting of Politovskaya at her apartment block in central Moscow. In a victory for Politkovskaya's lawyers who had feared the process...

Judicial authorities in Argentina have ordered the release of Gregorios Ríos, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for plotting the murder of José Luiz Cabezas, a photographer killed in January 1997, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has reported. "We shall never forget Cabezas," said Celso Schroeder, president of the Federation of Latin America and Caribbean Journalists (FEPALC)...

Leading Ethiopian journalist Amare Aregawi was assaulted brutally Friday last in capital Addis Ababa, an attack in which he suffered serious head injuries, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Aregawi edits the Reporter, a big-circulation newspaper published in Amharic and English-language versions. “The Ethiopian police must investigate this attack thoroughly in order to identify both...