Follow-up

On March 10, most privately-owned radio stations and newspapers in Lome, capital of Togo, suspended their normal activities in protest against the continued closure of three radio stations since December 2010. The Media Foundation for West Africa's (MFWA) correspondent in Togo reported that while the radio stations played music throughout the day, the newspapers, with the exception of state-owned...

Four New York Times journalists have been freed in Libya but 13 other journalists are either missing or reported in Libyan government custody, according to New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). "Four journalists from Al-Jazeera, two from Agence France-Presse, and one from Getty Images are either being detained by Libyan authorities or are missing," said CPJ...

Ukrainian prosecutor’s office has opened a criminal investigation into the role that former President Leonid Kuchma may have played in the September 2000 murder of opposition journalist Georgiy Gongadze. It is the first time that the prosecutor’s office has decided to consider tape-recordings made by former presidential bodyguard Mykola Melnichenko as evidence. In the recordings, a voice...

A court in Turkey on Thursday rejected a request for the provisional release of investigative journalists Ahmet Sik and Nedim Sener, who were arrested on March 3. They will now have to spend months in prison pending trial on a charge of belonging to an alleged conspiracy called Ergenekon, which the authorities regard as “terrorist organisation.” The court ordered their continued detention under...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has welcomed the March 17 release of Mahmudur Rahman, the editor of the opposition daily Amar Desh, on completion of an arbitrary jail sentence for contempt of court. Held for a total of nine months and 17 days, Rahman was greeted as he left prison by family members, opposition leaders and fellow journalists. The press freedom...

Four men have been arrested for the murder of an Al Jazeera journalist, and rebel officials claim evidence has emerged that Muammar Gaddafi's regime is sending undercover squads to carry out assassinations, the Independent has reported. The Independent was told that four men were caught in the city of Ajdabiya with evidence linking them to the death of Ali Hassan Al Jaber, who was killed near...

The jailed chief editor of the former newspaper "Gundalik Azerbaijan," Eynulla Fatullayev, has sent a letter to President Ilham Aliyev expressing hope that he will be released, RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service reports. Fatullayev's lawyer, Anar Qasimov, told RFE/RL the journalist asked Aliyev to intervene in the complicated situation around Fatullayev's case and "expressed hope he will be released as...

The Committee to Protect Journalists has expressed dismay at a provincial court's decision in Indonesia to acquit three accused killers of TV journalist Ridwan Salamun. On Wednesday, a panel of judges in the Tual District Court in Maluku declared the three men not guilty of the reduced charge of "persecution" in the mob violence in which Salamun was killed while covering a community clash in...

Thousands of Turkish journalists took to the streets here on Sunday demanding the release of colleagues in prison and raising the issue of press freedom. Journalists supported by activists, intellectuals, and some opposition parties marched in central Istanbul, Agence France-Presse (AFP) has eported. Some carried banners that read "Freedom to journalists", "No to wire tappings," and "Justice right...

No newspapers were distributed Friday in Côte d’Ivoire, where the protracted political impasse is creating an extremely grave if not impossible situation for journalists and news media. As the country seems to head steadily towards civil war, with casualties every day, journalists are being exposed to threats, arrests and reprisals, and often have to risk lives to report in some neighbourhoods...