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Press freedom organisations are outraged by the decision of a judge in Burkina Faso to drop charges against the only suspect in the 1998 murder of a journalist probing criminal allegations against the president's family. BROTHER'S PRESIDENT: Before his death, Norbert Zongo was investigating allegations that François Compaoré, brother and special advisor to President Blaise Compaoré (above)

A seventh journalist in Colombia has been forced to flee following death threats. Marcos Perales Mendoza, editor of La Portada, an investigative monthly based in Barrancabermeja (in the northern department of Santander), has been forced to flee the region by the death threats he has been getting since May 2005 in response to his articles about local corruption. He finally decided to leave after

A 73-year-old freelance journalist has been publicly beaten to death in Brazil by a municipal councillor who he recently accused of dubious administration practices. Media freedom groups have condemned the brutal and lethal attack of Ajuricaba Monassa de Paula, a freelance reporter who was affiliated to the Brazilian Press Association (ABI). They say Momassa started arguing in the streets of...

BELGRADE, Serbia, July 28 (UPI) -- Serbian President Boris Tadic says he refused to approve a government law because it suppresses the freedom of media and democracy. "Today, media freedom is essential for democracy of any society. The defense of media freedom is my duty as the head of state, because in that way I defend the constitutional rights of citizens to free expression and information,"...

Banjul, Gambia: Scores of reporters jailed, some emerging with tales of police beatings. Newspapers shuttered. A journalist forced into hiding. This country, a sliver on the West African coast, bills itself to foreigners as a cheerful beach resort, but critics say it shelters a corrupt regime that is using state terror to attack the media and silence opponents before September presidential...

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and Paris-based Reporters Without Borders have condemned the murder of Yevgeny Gerasimenko, a correspondent for the independent weekly Saratovsky Rasklad, who was found dead the morning of July 26 in his apartment in Saratov in southeastern Russia, according to local press reports. The groups voiced concern over deteriorating press freedom...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's prosecutor general on Friday rejected a U.S. offer of help to track down the killer of U.S. journalist Paul Klebnikov, shot in Moscow two years ago. Klebnikov, the editor of the Russian edition of Forbes magazine, was shot four times as he left his office in July 2004. No one has been convicted of his murder. A Russian jury in May found two men not guilty of the murder...

Reporters Without Borders today deplored "harassment and death threats" that have forced editor-in-chief You Saravuth to flee to neighbouring Thailand after printing an article criticising a nephew of prime minister Hun Sen. It called on the government to arrest those who made the threats and for the immediate dropping of legal action concerning the article, as well as protection for the editor’s...

New York, July 26, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by the murder of Yevgeny Gerasimenko, a correspondent for the independent weekly Saratovsky Rasklad, who was found dead this morning in his apartment in Saratov in southeastern Russia, according to local press reports. Saratov Department of Interior Spokesman Denis Zheltov said forensic evidence indicated that Gerasimenko had...

PRAGUE, July 26, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Haci Mammadov, former head of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Azerbaijani Interior Ministry, confessed on July 25 to having murdered opposition journalist Elmar Huseynov last year at the behest of then Economic Development Minister Farhad Aliyev. Huseynov, editor of the journal "Monitor" that systematically investigated alleged corruption, was gunned...