Charges of sedition have been brought against Mahmudur Rahman, the chief editor of the opposition daily Amar Desh, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). A national daily, the now closed Amar Desh is close to the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party. “In the space of a few days, Rahman has been accused of fraud, obstructing the police, printing an outlawed group’s posters and now...
A Yemeni court specialising in press cases on June 8 abandoned eight prosecutions against 33 journalists in line with a previously announced amnesty by President Abdullah Saleh to mark the 20th anniversary of the unification of north and South Yemen. In his June 8 announcement, justice minister Ghazi Chaif Al-Agbari said the decision to suspend legal proceedings concerned journalists prosecuted on...
Two months after the murder of Colombian journalist Clodomiro Castilla Ospino, the investigation is stalled and the victim’s daughter has been forced to flee her hometown of Montería after being followed and harassed, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Castilla, editor and publisher of the local news magazine El Pulso del Tiempo, was shot by two unidentified assailants on a...
A former police officer has been convicted in connection with the 2009 murder of Venezuelan journalist Orel Sambrano in the northern city of Valencia, according to Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). A court in Carabobo state sentenced Rafael Segundo Pérez, a former Carabobo police sergeant, to 25 years in prison on Tuesday on conspiracy charges related to the murder, according to press...
Important testimony was given at the 13th hearing in the trial of Turkish-Armenian newspaper editor Hrant Dink’s alleged killers in Istanbul on May 10, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). A witness, whose identity was not revealed, identified three of the defendants as being at the scene of Dink’s fatal shooting outside his newspaper on January 19, 2007. Testifying that the main suspect...
Two journalists have been freed in Yemen during the past 24 hours. Al-Ayyam editor Hani Bashraheel, who was arrested on January 6, and Moaz Ashhabi, who was sentenced to a year in prison on January 16, were freed on Monday, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). But a harsh crackdown on independent and opposition media continues, with another journalist, Hossein Al-Leswas, getting a one...
New demands have been made by a militant group calling itself the Asian Tigers, the captors of freelance journalist Asad Qureshi, who has been held in Pakistan since March 26, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). In a video sent to the Rome-based news agency Adnkronos International Tuesday, the abductors insisted that Pakistan release at least 160 Islamic militants in exchange...
Salvadorean authorities have arrested another suspect in their investigation into the September 2009 murder of Christian Poveda, a documentary filmmaker with dual French and Spanish nationality, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). The latest detainee is Iván Antonio Leiva, 23, an alleged member of the “Mara 18” gang who was wanted on suspicion of directly participating in Poveda’s murder...
President Mahinda Rajapaksa has issued a pardon to Sri Lankan journalist JS Tissainayagam. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is waiting for official clarification, however, concerning several important details. The country’s recently appointed external affairs minister, GL Peiris, announced the pardon at a press conference in Colombo. “President Mahinda Rajapaksa has decided to pardon...
Salvadorean authorities say they have arrested the gang leader who ordered documentary filmmaker Christian Poveda’s murder, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Poveda, who had dual French and Spanish nationality, was gunned down in an outlying district of San Salvador on September 2, 2009. Accused of various crimes and regarded by the police as one of the main leaders of the “Mara 18”...
