Follow-up

Sardasht Osman, a young journalist who was abducted on May 4 in Erbil and was found dead two days later in Mosul, was killed for refusing to cooperate with Ansar Al-Islam, a radical Islamic group linked to Al-Qaeda, not because of his work as a journalist, a Kurdistan government commission of enquiry has said. Appointed by the Kurdistan Regional Government's president, Massoud Barzani, the...

Former interior minister Yuri Kravchenko, who took his own life in unclear circumstances in 2005, was the sole instigator of the September 2000 abduction and murder of opposition journalist Georgiy Gongadze, the Ukraine attorney-general’s office announced on September 14, saying the pre-trial investigation into the case was now virtually concluded. An online newspaper editor who was very critical...

The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that the Turkish state failed in its duty to prevent newspaper editor Hrant Dink’s murder by acting on the information it had about plots against him, and violated his freedom of expression before his murder. The human rights court on September 14 ordered Turkey to pay his widow, Rakel Dink, and his children 100,000 euros in compensation and his brother...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) is supporting a request by Shakil Turabi, the editor-in-chief of the Islamabad-based South Asian News Agency (SANA), for the authorities to carry a rapid and thorough investigation into his 18-year-old son's disappearance since January 5 this year. Turabi believes that military intelligence agencies were involved in abducting his son...

Jullson Eninga, the editor of the daily Le Journal in the Democratic Republic of Congo, was released Tuesday, one day after the Kinshasa/Kalamu high court acquitted him of treason on the grounds that neither the facts of the case nor the legality of the charge had been established. “We are delighted that Eninga is finally free, especially as there was no basis for the charge on which he was placed...

A British journalist held hostage by militants in north-west Pakistan has been freed after spending almost six months in captivity. Asad Qureshi was abducted with two former Pakistani intelligence officers while travelling in the Taliban stronghold of North Waziristan. Local newspapers reported that a ransom of 14m rupees was paid although there was no independent confirmation. Qureshi went...

A year has gone by since Christian Poveda, a French photojournalist, documentary filmmaker and politically-committed observer, was shot dead in a San Salvador suburb on September 2, 2009, probably by members of a local gang. His death has deprived his profession of one of its best-informed specialists in Central America, a region often ignored by the international press. After covering the civil

A witness in the case of missing editor Vasyl Klymentyev has also gone missing, according to Petro Matvienko, deputy editor-in-chief of Noviy Stil newspaper. Matvienko refused to name the witness in order to avoid compromising the investigation, according to a report released by the UNIAN news agency. He also refused to cite the source for his information but said he had verified it. He said that...

Journalist AS Mani has been release on bail on an order that his lawyer managed to obtain from a Tamil Nadu appeal court on Thursday last. The publisher and editor of the Chennai-based magazine Naveena Netrikkan, Mani will however have to remain for the next month in Chidambaram, which is 250 km from Chennai. Arrested on the orders of Police Commissioner SR Jangid on July 19 after publishing an...

More than two weeks have gone by without any news of reporter Abdul Ilah Haydar Shae and cartoonist Kamal Sharaf since their arrests in Sanaa on August 16 and 17, which have been followed by an increase in cases of violence against journalists. An Al-Qaeda specialist who works for the Saba new agency, Shae was arrested at his home at the end of the daily Ramadan fast on the evening of August 16...