State Impunity

Ability to report freely has become a casualty in the ongoing battle for control over Gaza between rival Hamas and Fatah groups. From raids on news establishments and rampant abductions of journalists, to use of Press markings on vehicles by combatants, all have made reporting riskier than before in a conflict that draws some of the world's most intense media coverage. Dozens of armed members of...

Female journalists are increasingly being treated as soft targets by groups wanting to get their message of violence and control across. Two Afghan reporters and an Iraqi journalist who received numerous death threats for their work covering sectarian violence were killed last week, in a string of attacks against women journalists in conflict areas. Sahar Hussein Ali al-Haydari was brutally

Armed men attacked the headquarters of a Palestinian press agency in Gaza City Tuesday, employees said. The militants, most of them masked, broke into the offices of Palmedia and scared staff with aimless gunshots before seizing a computer and television editing equipment. Injuries were not reported. Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) Wednesday condemned the impunity with which journalists are being...

The UN Security Council has established an international criminal tribunal empowered to prosecute individuals responsible for a series of deadly attacks against Lebanese journalists in 2005. The Security Council approved resolution 1757 on May 30, establishing an international criminal tribunal to prosecute the masterminds of the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri, who...

A US military report that exonerated US troops in the killings of two Al-Arabiya journalists at a Baghdad checkpoint in 2004 has failed to address contradictory witness reports, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. This includes statements from Al-Arabiya employees that at least two US soldiers fired directly at the journalists’ vehicle, newly declassified records show. The report...

Two Iraqi ABC News journalists were killed Thursday in Iraq, ABC News President David Westin has said. Cameraman Alaa Uldeen Aziz, 33, and soundman Saif Laith Yousuf, 26, were returning home from work at the ABC News Baghdad bureau Thursday afternoon when their car was ambushed and they were killed by unknown assailants. Aziz, Yousuf, and another colleague were on their way back home.The three men...

A journalist and a media worker were shot dead Sunday in a renewal of clashes between Fatah and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Gunmen wearing presidential guard uniforms stopped a taxi carrying Suleiman Abdul-Rahim al-Ashi, 25, an economics editor for the Hamas-affiliated daily Filistin ( Palestine), and Mohammad Matar Abdo, 25, a manager responsible for distribution and civic relations, Editor-in-Chief...

BBC correspondent Alan Johnston’s abductors have demanded $5 million for his release, the London-based Asharq Alawsat reported Tuesday even as the police in the Gaza Strip scuffled with journalists demonstrating in support the journalist. The demand for ransom contradicts reports circulated Sunday that Johnston had been executed, which Palestinian Authority security officials said they could...

A US soldier facing trial in absentia next week in Italy for shooting dead an Italian hostage negotiator and wounding a journalist at a road block in Baghdad has justified the shooting. Mario Lozano of the US Army’s 69th Infantry Regiment told the New York Post in his first major interview since the 2005 incident that when confronted with the vehicle moving at speed towards his checkpoint he did...

The body of slain Afghan journalist Ajmal Naqshbandi was buried Wednesday in Afghan capital Kabul as hundreds of mourners attended his funeral. Naqshbandi, 26, a freelance journalist, was beheaded on April 8 by Taliban extremists as the Afghan government refused to release Taliban prisoners in exchange. Hundreds turned out to pray in the street and see the journalist’s coffin lowered into the sun...