State Persecution

An Iraqi judicial committee has dismissed terrorism-related allegations against Associated Press (AP) photographer Bilal Hussein and ordered him released nearly two years after he was detained by the US military, the news agency has reported. Hussein, 36, remained in custody Wednesday at Camp Cropper, a US detention facility near Baghdad's airport. A decision by a four-judge panel said Hussein's...

Seven employees of a pro-peace radio station in Israel were released from jail Tuesday, a day after police raided the station's Jerusalem office and seized its transmission equipment, the Associated Press (AP) has reported. On Monday, police shut down the transmitter and closed the studio, saying the station was broadcasting without a permit. There are numerous pirate radio stations broadcasting...

A New York Times correspondent and a British freelancer who were arrested and accused of reporting illegally in Zimbabwe have been freed on bail, but their passports are being held and they are unable to leave the country, the Associated Press (AP) has reported quoting a lawyer. Barry Bearak, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for the Times, suffered a back injury during a fall in his cell, said...

The Yemeni government has cancelled the licence of independent weekly newspaper Al-Wasat. On Saturday last, Information Minister Hassan al-Lawzi ordered the newspaper’s licence terminated because the paper had damaged relations with Saudi Arabia, and violated technical provisions of the press law, according to local journalists and official press accounts. A Yemeni government spokesman who asked...

The Zimbabwean police has arrested two unaccredited foreign journalists at a hotel in the capital Harare. The police issued a statement Thursday saying that the reporters had been covering the country's election without any accreditation. Pulitzer Prize-winner Barry Bearak, a New York Times correspondent based in Johannesburg was arrested Thursday evening. The identity of the other journalist has...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has called for the release of Ahmed Mahmud Hassan, of satellite al-Sumariya television, who has been held since March 30 by Iraqi authorities who have not given any reason for his arrest. Mahmud Hassan was picked up in Mahmudiya, 30 km south of Baghdad, while he was covering clashes between Iraqi forces and rebel insurgents. He is thought to be detained in a...

Press freedom organisations have expressed outrage at the campaign being waged by the Afghanistan ministry of information and culture, the lower house of Parliament and the Council of Ulemas against privately-owned TV stations, especially Tolo TV, for broadcasting footage of men and women dancing together. The Council of Ulemas and the information and culture ministry announced on March 30 that...

A young Afghan journalist sentenced to death in northern Afghanistan on charges of blasphemy has been moved to Kabul ahead of an appeal due soon, Agence France-Presse (AFP) has reported. A primary provincial court in the northern town of Mazar-i-Sharif sentenced 23-year-old journalist Sayed Parvez Kambakhsh to death in January in a case that has attracted worldwide condemnation. He had no legal...

The six-month jail term handed down to leading Egyptian editor Ibrahim Eissa has come in for worldwide condemnation. The Boulak Abul Ela Court of Misdemeanor, on the outskirts of Cairo, sentenced Ibrahim Eissa, editor in chief of the independent daily Al-Dustour, to six months in prison for “publishing false information and rumors” about President Hosni Mubarak’s health. The court said the...

On the second anniversary of a police raid on the privately-owned weekly the Independent, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has called on the government to lift the illegal and unofficial ban that has prevented the newspaper from publishing for the past two years. “By suppressing a newspaper that was often very critical, the government broke the laws that it requires Gambians to respect under pain...