Bennet Rupesinghe, one of the editors of the Colombo-based online newspaper LankaeNews, was released on bail Friday after a week in pre-trial detention for allegedly making threats, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Arrested when he reported to police in the Colombo suburb of Wellampitiya on March 31, Rupesinghe was freed on payment of 310,000 rupees (2...
One of four Al Jazeera journalists detained by Libyan forces has been released after a bizarre turn of events that saw the team being arrested, freed and then rearrested. Lotfi Al Masoudi, a Tunisian national, crossed the border into Tunisia on Sunday night. An Al Jazeera spokesman said that the network is "glad to see the end of the ordeal that Lotfi unnecessarily went through" while calling for...
The Reuters news agency says Syrian authorities have freed one of its photographers after holding him for six days. Reuters said the 50-year-old Khaled al-Hariri was freed Sunday and told colleagues that he was well. Al-Hariri was one of four Reuters journalists held over the last week in Syria. The other three have already been released and ordered to leave the country. A fifth Reuters journalist...
The reported that on 27 March 2011 The Agoza misdemeanours appeals court on Sunday upheld a court of first instance ruling imposing a fine of LE5,000 (approx. US$840) on journalist Ahmed Hosni Wadee, of elShorouk newspaper, according to the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI). The decision stems from a lawsuit filed against the journalist by Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, based on a...
The Moscow city court has continued hearings in the murder case of Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova. The March 15 hearing opened with yet another attempt by lawyer Aleksandr Vassilyev, who is defending Nikita Tikhonov, the man accused of shooting and killing the two victims, to challenge Judge Aleksandr Zamashnyuk, saying he is biased "in favour of the prosecution". That plea, like the...
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on Belarusian authorities to stop the politically motivated prosecution of Andrzej Poczobut, a prominent correspondent for Poland's largest daily, Gazeta Wyborcza. On Monday, prosecutors in the western city of Grodno filed criminal charges against Poczobut for allegedly insulting Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko in articles printed in...
Ross Dunkley, founder and editor of the Myanmar Times weekly newspaper, was released on bail from a Burmese prison Tuesday, according to international news reports. Dunkley, an Australian citizen arrested February 10 amid tense negotiations over the future of the weekly, had been denied several earlier requests for release on bail. Dunkley was released on 10 million kyat (US$11,780) bail because...
Eleven years after the brutal murder of online journalist Georgy Gongadze, Ukrainian prosecutors on Thursday indicted former President Leonid Kuchma on abuse-of-office charges in connection with the slaying, local and international news reports said. According to the online news outlet Ukrainska Pravda—which Gongadze founded and edited before his murder—prosecutors indicted Kuchma on charges of...
New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on Kazakh authorities to thoroughly investigate journalism as a motive in the murder of Kyrgyz journalist Gennady Pavlyuk. Pavlyuk, better known by his pen name, Ibragim Rustambek, died in the hospital on December 22, 2009, after having been thrown from an upper-story window of an apartment building in Kazakhstan...
The findings from the official investigation into Japanese cameraman Hiro Muramoto’s death during clashes between government forces and anti-government “Red Shirts” in Bangkok on April 10, 2010 are being seen as “utterly unsatisfactory.” The provisional conclusion one year after the event that the security forces did not fire the shot that killed Muramoto, who worked for Reuters, betrays a...
