Two journalists who went missing Tuesday after an ambush in Oaxaca state in southern Mexico were rescued late Thursday by local police, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Érika Ramírez and David Cilia, reporters with the national newsweekly Contralínea, were found Thursday night in a forest near the Hierba Santa River, the news agency EFE reported. The journalists were taken...
Hang Chakra, editor and publisher of the opposition-aligned Khmer Machas Srok daily newspaper in Cambodia has been released from prison, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). He was granted a royal pardon on April 13 after serving nine months of a one-year sentence on a “criminal disinformation” conviction over a series of critical articles on alleged high-level government...
Azerbaijani authorities must comply with the European Court of Human Rights’ decision ordering the immediate release of imprisoned editor Eynulla Fatullayev, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. Fatullayev, a 2009 recipient of CPJ’s International Press Freedom Award, has been jailed for three years on fabricated charges. The Strasbourg-based European Court has recently ruled that...
The Philippines government has dropped murder charges against Zaldy Ampatuan, former governor of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, and his uncle, Akmad Ampatuan, former mayor of Mamasapano on the southern island of Mindanao, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The move, announced in Manila on Saturday, overruled the Quezon City Regional Court, which is hearing the...
A Spanish court April 12 acquitted five journalists who ran the Basque-language daily Euskaldunon Egunkaria of all charges of links to the Basque armed separatist group ETA, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). The charges were brought against the journalists in 2003 and, as a result, the newspaper had been closed since February 20, 2003 on the orders of a National Court judge, Juan de...
New demands have been made by a Taliban group that is holding captive two French television journalists, Hervé Ghesquière and Stéphane Taponier, translator Mohammed Reza, and the group’s driver, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). They were taken in Kapisa province, northeast of Kabul, in December. Speaking alternately in English and French, the two French reporters appeared...
The Turkish interior ministry has asked the judicial authorities to investigate five police officers attached to the Security Directorate in Istanbul on suspicion of failing to take the threats against newspaper editor Hrant Dink seriously and failing to protect him, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Dink, who was of Armenian origin, was gunned down in January 2007. The five policemen...
Disturbing video footage showing a 2007 US military airstrike that killed about a dozen Iraqis in eastern Baghdad, including a Reuters cameraman and assistant, was released Tuesday by WikiLeaks, a website that publishes sensitive leaked documents. The video raises questions about the actions of US military forces and the thoroughness and transparency of the investigation that followed, the...
Several Iranian journalists continue to be held in inhumane conditions at the notorious Evin Prison. At least one journalist is reported in deteriorating health, and two are under severe duress to “confess” to charges that could bring execution, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. The daughters of Badressadat Mofidi, the prominent Iranian journalist and secretary of the banned...
Gustavo Azócar Alcalá, a journalist based in the western Venezuela state of Táchira who had been detained since July 9, 2009, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison on March 26 on a charge of “administrative corruption” but was granted a conditional release, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). The court acquitted him on charges of embezzling public funds and fraud. The charges...
