Reporters Without Borders called today for the immediate release of Abdel Fettah Ould Ebeidna, managing editor of the daily newspaper Al-Aqsa, who was sent to prison in Nouakchott yesterday because of a libel complaint against him by a businessman. “His imprisonment is a very ominous sign for the media at a time when the country is in the grip of a major drugs scandal,” the worldwide press freedom...
CARACAS: Arturo Sarmiento speaks English polished at Sandhurst, the British military school. He made fortunes trading oil and importing whiskey. Now Sarmiento, just 35 and a staunch supporter of President Hugo Chávez, owns an expanding television network here. As tempers flare around Chávez's decision not to renew the license of RCTV, the country's oldest broadcaster and a vocal critic...
(ANEM/IFEX) - BELGRADE, May 28, 2007 - The Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM) strongly condemns the continuous pressure on and attacks against media that report on war crimes in former Yugoslavia. ANEM also condemns the glorification of those indicted in war crimes processes and the denial of these crimes. On 26 May 2007, several hundred members of the Serbian Radical Party and the...
(CJFE/IFEX) - (Toronto, May 28, 2007) Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE) believes that the independence of journalists is at stake as Derek Finkle's fight to quash a subpoena against him goes back to court on May 29. CJFE has joined with the Professional Writers Association of Canada (PWAC) and the Writers' Union of Canada as interveners in the case. The subpoena was issued in 2006 to...
LONDON (Reuters) - A Palestinian official said on Sunday missing BBC Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston was alive and well and he hoped he would be released soon. Johnston, 44, disappeared on March 12 while driving in Gaza. Ghazi Hamad, spokesman for the Palestinian cabinet, told Sky News he could confirm Johnston was alive and being held captive. The Palestinian government had made great efforts to...
CARACAS, Venezuela -- In the 1990s, Venezuelan journalist José Vicente Rangel hosted a television talk show whose aggressive style and muckraking led to the downfall of President Carlos Andrés Pérez. Now, after eight years as President Hugo Chávez's deputy, Rangel is back on television, interviewing and breaking news on "José Vicente Today." But instead of airing the bare-knuckles journalism for...
Reporters Without Borders called today on provincial and national authorities to thoroughly investigate the murder on 21 May of photojournalist Dodie Nunez, of the regional newspaper Katapat, which had criticised corruption. It said the killing may have had political motives. Nunez was returning home in Cavite province, south of Manila, when three motorcyclists stopped the bus he was on and shot...
(IPYS/IFEX) - In testimony given between 16 and 18 May 2007, paramilitary chief Juan Francisco Prada Márquez confessed that on 2004 he ordered the murder of journalist Martín Larrota Duarte because Larrota Duarte had opposed the paramilitary umbrella group known as the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia. The paramilitary chief was then the head of the "Héctor Julio Peinado" front, which operated in...
(IPYS/IFEX) - On 19 May 2007, journalist Nelson Álvarez Narváez, a columnist with the newspaper "El Siglo de Maracay", was murdered during a birthday party at his mother's house. A hit man burst into the house and shot him six times. The murderer then fled in a car, accompanied by another man. The crime took place in the city of Maracay, Aragua state, in central Venezuela. The motives for the...
BAKU, May 25, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- Elmar Huseynov, an Azerbaijani editor of the journal "Monitor," which focused frequently on corruption, was gunned down outside his apartment on March 2, 2005. Although there have been arrests and confessions, his murder has never been officially solved. Such cases are common across the CIS and, despite protestations from international media watchdogs, journalists...
