Follow-up

On the 100th day after the sentencing of journalist JS Tissainayagam, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa to use his constitutional powers to release him from the 20-year prison sentence that was given to him on August 31. Tissainayagam, also known as Tissa, was one of dozens of ethnic Tamil journalists who were swept up...

The time that Swedish-Eritrean journalist Dawit Isaak has spent in a jail in Eritrea, without a trial and without any visits from his family or lawyers, on Thursday reached 3,000 days. “It is a disgrace that he remains in prison and it is remarkable that the Swedish government does not try harder to get him released,” said Jesper Bengtsson, president of the Swedish section of Reporters Sans...

Kyrgyzstan’s Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that the prosecution of a man accused in the 2007 murder of Alisher Saipov, editor of the Uzbek-language weekly Siyosat, can proceed, the independent news website Ferghana reported. Saipov’s family and colleagues have called the case bogus, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The ruling came in an appeal filed by the...

Imad Abadi, the Al-Diyar TV host who suffered serious gunshot injuries to the head and neck in an attack on November 23 in Baghdad, was flown to the German city of Munich on December 3 for brain surgery, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. RSF said it was relieved to learn that the operation went ahead without any problem in Munich’s Grosshadern Clinic on December 7. Abadi’s brother...

Journalist Laxman Choudhury of the daily Sambad was finally freed on bail Thursday after being held for ten weeks in Gajapati district in Orissa. Released on the orders of the Orissa high court, he is still facing a sedition charge because the local police found Maoist leaflets in his possession. On leaving prison, Choudhury thanked all of his colleagues who campaigned for his release.

After being held by police for 12 days at the headquarters of the criminal investigation department in Kuwait City, journalist Mohammed Al-Jassem appeared in court again Tuesday morning and was able to challenge the legality of his detention and the way the investigation has been conducted, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. At the end of a hearing of more than two hours, the court...

AS Mani, the editor of the Tamil magazine Naveena Netrikkan, was freed on bail Saturday after being held for a month in Tamil Nadu. Relatives told Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) that he returned home at midday. He still faces defemation charges.

A brutal election-related massacre in the Philippine province of Maguindanao on Monday appears to be single deadliest event for the press since 1992, when the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) began keeping detailed records on journalist deaths. The New York Times and the Associated Press (AP) reported Wednesday that at least 18 of the victims have been preliminarily identified...

Canadian freelance reporter Amanda Lindhout and Australian freelance photographer Nigel Brennan were released Wednesday in Mogadishu. Lindhout and Brennan were released at 20:40 hrs local time, according to Ahmed Diriye, MP, who spoke to the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ). The two journalists were taken to a heavily guarded Hotel Sahafi in central Mogadishu. They are due to be flown...

One of the main suspects in the November 2008 murder of Radio Okapi journalist Didace Namujimbo, Corp Sébastien Tandema, escaped from a cell in the 10th Military Region’s headquarters in the eastern city of Bukavu Monday, just five days after he was arrested, Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) and Journalist en Danger (JED) have reported. When he appeared before military prosecutors a few days after...