BRUSSELS, Belgium: A European Union high court on Wednesday denied a German journalist's request for damages after the EU anti-fraud office gave information to law enforcement authorities that led to his detention. The EU's Court of First Instance said that handing over the information about Hans-Martin Tillack, who was a correspondent for German news weekly Stern, to authorities in Belgium and...
A Sudanese journalist specialising in the war-torn Darfur region has been held incommunicado for five days without charge, journalists said on Wednesday. Abu Obeida Aballah covered the Darfur peace talks in Nigeria, forging contacts with many rebels there. Since a May peace deal, signed by only one of three negotiating rebel groups, violence has escalated with a dozen aid workers killed and tens...
Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi photographer who helped the Associated Press win a Pulitzer Prize last year, is now in his sixth month in a U.S. Army prison in Iraq. He doesn't understand why he's there, and neither do his AP colleagues. The Army says it thinks Bilal has too many contacts among insurgents. He has taken pictures the Army thinks could have been made only with the connivance of insurgents...
The Pentagon said on Monday that an Iraqi photographer working for The Associated Press and held by the U.S. military since April was considered a security threat with “strong ties to known insurgents.” Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said there was sufficient evidence to justify the continued detention of Bilal Hussein, 35, who AP said was taken into U.S. military custody on April 12 in the...
The contempt of court proceedings against several Croatian journalists before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) are a new development in the history of the international courts that were created in the early 1990s to try senior officials suspected of war crimes or crimes against humanity. REVEALING MORE THAN CALLED FOR: The International Criminal Tribunal for...
NEW YORK - The U.S. military has been holding an Iraqi photographer working for The Associated Press since April, and the agency asked Sunday that he either be charged or released. Bilal Hussein, 35, was taken into U.S. military custody on April 12 in the Iraqi city of Ramadi and has been held since then without charge, AP said. “Bilal Hussein has been held in violation of Iraqi law and in...
The Iranian government has shut down four publications, including a major reformist newspaper, according to reports. The reformist daily, Shargh, or East, was shut down Monday indefinitely because it had refused to replace its managing director apart from publishing a cartoon in a recent edition that was considered insulting to the government, state television said, citing a statement from the...
American journalist Paul Salopek was released Saturday from a prison in the war-torn Darfur region where he was held for more than a month on espionage charges, news agencies reported. A judge in the North Darfur capital of al-Fasher released the Chicago Tribune journalist and his Chadian driver and interpreter after a 13-minute hearing. FREE AND BACK: New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, right...
A U.N. tribunal charged a Croat journalist with contempt of court on Monday for revealing the names of two witnesses who testified in a war crimes case. Freelance journalist Domagoj Margetic named the protected witnesses from the trial of General Tihomir Blaskic on his personal Web site in July and August of this year, the tribunal said in a statement. The U.N. tribunal for the former Yugoslavia...
A Beijing court on Friday morning unexpectedly dismissed a state secrets charge against a researcher for the New York Times but sentenced him to three years in prison on a lesser, unrelated charge of fraud, the newspaper has reported. The verdict against researcher Zhao Yan, 44, spared him a prison sentence of 10 years or longer and also served as a blunt rebuke to the investigation by state...
