Follow-up

The Lilongwe Magistrate court has freed Gabriel Kamlomo, online editor for Zodiak Broadcasting Station (ZBS), a privately owned radio station. Kamlomo was accused of publishing "false information likely to cause public alarm". In a ruling issued on December 2, Senior Resident Magistrate Vikochie Ndovi said the court found Kamlomo with no case to answer, the Namibia-based Media Institute of...

Publisher Irfan Sanci (Sel Yayincilik/Publishing), recipient of the 2010 IPA Freedom Prize - Special Award, and the translator of Guillaume Apollinaire's Adventures of the Young Don Juan, have been acquitted in Istanbul. IPA, which observed the trial, welcomes their acquittal, hoping this will lead to other publishers' acquittals and a significant decrease in freedom to publish trials in Turkey...

The Council of Europe Committee of Ministers has released its final statement on the case of imprisoned journalist Eynulla Fatullayev. The statement emphasises that, as a member of the Council of Europe, Azerbaijan has agreed to abide by the final judgment of the court. "The November 11 ruling by the Azerbaijani Supreme Court makes Fatullayev's release possible. However, he remains behind bars and...

The State of Carabobo's Court of Appeals (in north-central Venezuela) has annulled the ruling that sentenced journalist Francisco "Pancho" Pérez to three years and nine months in prison, disqualified him professionally and politically for the same period of time, and ordered him to pay 1,250 Tax Units (approx. US$18,900). Pérez began practicing journalism again for the newspaper El Carabobeño on...

Investigators in Thailand now believe that troops may have been responsible for the shooting death of Reuters cameraman Hiro Muramoto, on April 10, according to a leaked preliminary state probe by Thailand's Department of Special Investigation (DSI), Reuters reported from Bangkok last week. Thai government investigators said in the report that the death of Muramoto, a 43-year-old Japanese national...

The Khimki City Court has overturned the defamation conviction of editor Mikhail Beketov, a verdict that had been condemned in Russia and abroad, New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists has reported. Beketov had been found guilty last month of slandering Khimki Mayor Vladimir Strelchenko in a 2007 television interview. In the interview, the journalist said his car had...

The Ukrainian attorney-general’s office announced Tuesday that the investigation into the role that Gen Oleksiy Pukach, a former intelligence officer, played in the murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze in September 2000 in Kiev has been completed and that the case is being set to trial. Significantly, the statement added that investigators had not succeeded in building a case against any other...

Belarusian prosecutors have closed their investigation into the September death of Aleh Byabenin, founder and director of the Minsk-based, pro-opposition news website Charter 97. Authorities said Wednesday that they did not find evidence of foul play, according to New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Byabenin's brother found the journalist hanged in a stairway of his summer house...

Zimbabwean journalist Nqobani Ndlovu was released on November 25, more than a week after he was arrested in connection with a report alleging that the police force was allowing former war veterans and retired officers to take up senior posts without sitting for promotional examinations. His lawyers are now challenging the constitutionality of the law under which Ndlovu was charged. “We feel it...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned the latest proceedings that Croatian interior minister Tomislav Karamarko has initiated against journalist Zeljko Peratovic, the target of repeated legal actions by the minister during past two years accusing him variously of defamation, violating the confidentiality of a judicial investigation and divulging information...