State Persecution

Per Bjorklund, a Cairo-based Swedish freelance journalist and blogger who covered a recent wave of factory strikes in Egypt, was denied entry on returning to the country Tuesday and his passport was confiscated, apparently because his name appeared on a blacklist, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. As he arrived in Cairo on a flight from Prague, he is reportedly to be expelled on the...

US freelance journalist Joe Sharkey, who covered a 2006 plane crash in Brazil in which he was a passenger, is facing an onerous civil defamation suit for comments he said were wrongly attributed to him. On the third anniversary of the accident, the Committee to Protect Journalists called on Brazilian judicial authorities to dismiss the case, which is based on the tenuous claim that the comments...

Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) has expressed concern over the safety of Mouctar Bah, the Conakry correspondent of Agence France-Presse (AFP) and Radio France Internationale (RFI), and Amadou Diallo, the BBC’s correspondent. After being threatened and roughed up by soldiers while covering the violent dispersal of an opposition demonstration two days ago in which hundreds died, they are now...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on Yemeni authorities to clarify the circumstances of the disappearance and current whereabouts of Mohammad al-Maqaleh, editor of Aleshteraki, a website affiliated with the opposition Socialist Party. Al-Maqaleh was detained by unidentified men on September 18 in Sana’a, according to local news reports. A local journalist, who asked to remain...

Authorities have created a cimlate of fear among the Gabonese media by arresting Albert Yangari, the well-known editor of the national daily L’Union, for several hours on September 25, Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. “This incident was clearly motivated by the government’s desire to intimidate journalists who dare to investigate sensitive subjects,” RSF said. “ L’Union has displayed...

A newspaper editor in police custody in Niger since Sunday was charged with criminal libel on Wednesday in connection with a story accusing a top official of involvement in a corruption scandal, according to local journalists and news reports. Ibrahim Soumana Gaoh of the private weekly Le Témoin was being held at the central prison in the capital Niamey pending trial on Tuesday, according to the...

A leading editor in Yemen has been abducted by security forces. The Yemeni Journalists Syndicate (YJS) says that they are concerned for the safety of Editor Mohammed al Maqaleh who was allegedly abducted on September 17 in apparent retribution for reporting on the Sa'ada War. Al Maqaleh is the editor for the opposition Socialist Party's website, Al Eshteraki. On Wednesday last, al Eshteraki...

Turkish investigators have secretly listened into telephone calls to and from popular daily newspaper Cumhuriyet, the Turkish Justice Ministry has confirmed, according to Turkey’s Hurriyet Daily News newspaper. The wiretapping took place without the necessary approval of the Turkish courts. Investigators undertook the controversial eavesdropping as part of an ongoing police probe — known as the...

Iranian judicial authorities are continuing to hold journalists employed by foreign news media including, Maziar Bahari, the correspondent of the US news magazine Newsweek, arrested exactly three months ago, and Fariba Pajooh, a stringer for Radio France Internationale and other media, who Tuesday began her second month in detention. Bahari has dual Canadian and Iranian citizenship. “The recent...

Four journalists were among more than 7,000 prisoners being released under an amnesty announced by Burma’s junta on Thursday last. “I am happy to be free and I am going to continue working as a journalist,” Eint Khaing Oo said as she was freed from Insein prison, near Rangoon under an amnesty announced by the military government. Three other journalists, Kyaw Kyaw Thant and Monywa Aung Shin, were...