State Persecution

Iranian authorities announced on Tuesday that two German reporters for Bild am Sonntag will be charged with espionage, according to international news reports. They were arrested in October while interviewing the son of a woman sentenced to death by stoning on charges of adultery. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has expressed alarm at these developments and called on Iranian authorities...

A Singapore court Tuesday sentenced British writer Alan Shadrake to six weeks in prison and a fine for 20,000 Singapore dollars (11,320 euros) for criticising the country’s use of the death penalty in his book Once a Jolly Hangman: Singapore Justice in the Dock. Failure to pay the fine would add two weeks to his sentence. Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) deplored the...

An appeal court has upheld the decision of a Tashkent court to fine Uzbekistan’s few remaining independent reporters, Abdulmalik Boboyev 10,000 dollars. The fine is 400 times what he earns every month as Voice of America correspondent, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Boboyev is entirely innocent of the charges on which he was convicted – defaming and...

While the Azerbaijani Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that the country will uphold the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights decision to immediately release editor Eynulla Fatullayev, he remains in jail. The Committee to Protect Journalists called today for his immediate release. A November 5 decision by the Baku Appeals Court said the editor must remain in custody while he appeals an...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has expressed alarm at reports that Kyrgyz journalist Azimjon Askarov has been beaten repeatedly in custody. On Wednesday, an appeals court in the southern Jalal-Abad region upheld the life sentence given in September to Azimjon Askarov, a reporter, researcher, and head of the local human rights group Vozdukh, and six of his co-defendants, the Moscow...

Azerbaijan’s supreme court Thursday partially complied with a European Court of Human Rights ruling from last April by quashing jailed newspaper editor Eynulla Fatullayev’s 2007 convictions on charges of terrorism and inciting hatred, thereby recognising that his rights were violated. But it upheld a third 2007 conviction on a charge of tax evasion and a July 2010 conviction on a charge of...

Azerbaijan’s highest court on Thursday upheld a April 22 decision by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), ordering the immediate release of Eynulla Fatullayev, an Azeri journalist who was sentenced in 2007 to eight-and-a-half years in prison for defamation and “fomenting terrorism” through his articles. As IPI reported at the time, the Court voted six to one that Azerbaijan had violated...

Egyptian authorities must immediately release blogger Abdel Karim Suleiman, known online as Karim Amer, who completed his four-year prison sentence on November 5, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has demanded. CPJ also called on authorities to investigate and punish a security officer who reportedly assaulted Amer on Tuesday. The government's continued imprisonment of Amer...

Zimbabwean police have issued an arrest warrant issued last week against exiled editor Wilf Mbanga concerning a 2008 story about the murder of an election official, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. Zimbabwe Republic Police Chief Superintendent Andrew Phiri told CPJ on Wednesday that Mbanga, publisher of the The Zimbabwean newspaper, which is edited in London...

Héctor Camero, a representative of Radio Tierra y Libertad, a community radio station based in a poor neighbourhood of Monterrey (in the northeastern state of Nuevo León), was told on November 3 that he has been sentenced to two years in prison and a fine of 15,000 pesos (900 euros) on a charge of “using, developing and exploiting radio frequencies without a licence.” The sentence deals another...