State Persecution

Press freedom groups have urged US President Barack Obama and Attorney-General Eric Holder to avoid prosecuting WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange for publishing classified cables and other documents. Chairman Paul E Steiger and Executive Director Joel Simon of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) , and Jean-François Julliard Secretary-General of Paris-based press...

The Sunday Independent on Sunday said police have been harassing one of its journalists following an exposé on allegations of fraud, corruption and nepotism. Following the reports, the police were granted an interdict by the North Gauteng High Court to silence the paper, according to Eye Witness News. The paper said the journalist who wrote the article was being followed by the police and had her...

Sudanese security officers attacked BBC correspondent James Copnall on Tuesday as he was reporting on a demonstration and ensuing arrests, the journalist reported. Officers also confiscated Copnall's recording equipment, New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. Police in Khartoum, who had detained numerous protesters, also deleted photographs from the...

Musa Saidykhan, who was detained for three weeks in 2006 by Gambian state security agents, was tortured and must receive compensation, a West African regional court ruled on Thursday. Saidykhan, editor-in-chief of the now-banned private biweekly The Independent, was detained for 22 days without charge by the Gambian National Intelligence Agency (NIA) during a brutal government crackdown following...

Human rights lawyer and free speech defender Nasrin Sotoudeh has now been held for more than 100 days in Iran. She began her third hunger strike last week and is resolved to continue it until the end, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Shirin Ebadi, Nobel peace laureate and president of the Tehran-based Centre for Human Rights Defenders, Jean-François...

Elba Yolibeth Rubio and Elia Xiomara Hernández, two reporters for community radio La Voz de Zacate Grande, were arrested in Honduras after covering a family’s eviction from land on the southern island of Zacate Grande by police and marines on December 15, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Around 20 arrests were made when the family, with the support of...

A 15-year jail sentence has been slapped by a court in Tiraspol, the capital of the breakaway region of Transnistria, on journalist Ernest Vardanean on charges of high treason and spying for Moldova, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. The court specified that Vardanean should be subjected to a “severe regime” while serving his sentence, issued under...

Radio Kapisa director Hojatullah Mujadadi is being subjected to prolonged detention by the Afghan intelligence agency known as the National Directorate of Security (NDS). Saturday, Mujadadi completed his third month of being held at NDS headquarters in Kabul, where he has not been allowed to see a lawyer, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). The NDS and...

A Kenyan journalist named by the International Criminal Court as a key suspect in deadly post-poll unrest said Thursday he was shocked by the move weeks after interviewing and taking pictures of the court's prosecutor, Agence France-Presse (AFP) has reported. Joshua arap Sang, who met Luis Moreno-Ocampo during his latest visit to Kenya earlier this month, is the only one among the six Kenyans...

A senior Rwandan presidential adviser should immediately retract a grave and unsubstantiated public accusation against a journalist, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has demanded. Brig Gen Richard Rutatina, a presidential security advisor, publicly accused Nelson Gatsimbazi, managing editor of the Kinyarwanda bimonthly Umusingi, of working with "enemies of the state." He made the...