Follow-up

Murder charges have been filed in the 2005 slaying of investigative reporter Marlene Garcia-Esperat in the Philippines, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. Osmeña Montañer and Estrella Sabay were charged Monday as the alleged masterminds behind the murder. Montañer and Sabay were Mindano Department of Agriculture officials who Garcia-Esperat had accused of siphoning off money...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) and the Burma Media Association (BMA) have welcomed the release of Saw Myint Than, the former chief correspondent of Flower News Journal, a privately-owned magazine. He was held for seven weeks without being tried and without having any chance to defend himself. “We are relieved by Saw Myint Than’s release, just a few weeks after the release of U Win Tin, Burma’s...

Dominique Makeli, a former reporter with state-owned Radio Rwanda who had held since 1994 on a vague, genocide-related charge, has been released, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Makeli’s release on October 13 was a result of his acquittal by a gacaca (popular tribunal) in the Kigali district of Nyarugenge on October 5. Detained since September 18, 1994, he had been transferred from...

The lawyer of Afghan reporter Sayed Parvez Kambakhsh sentenced to death on blasphemy charges accused authorities Thursday of holding his client beyond a legal deadline, as the young man neared a full year in detention, says an Agence France-Presse (AFP) report. The appeal of Kambakhsh -- arrested last October and sentenced to death by a primary court in January -- has been repeatedly delayed...

A Niamey appeals court has freed Radio France International (RFI) journalist Moussa Kaka after he had spent more than a year in jail accused of collaborating with Tuareg-led rebels. The court Tuesday ordered Kaka's release and downgraded the charges against him. He was arrested in September last year charged with colluding with rebels who have been waging a guerrilla war in Niger's uranium...

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has pardoned outspoken editor Ibrahim Eissa from the two-month jail sentence the latter received for “publishing false information of a nature to disturb public order or security,” state-TV announced late Monday. An Egyptian appeals court on September 28 upheld a guilty verdict against Eissa who wrote stories questioning President Mubarak's health. Eissa, editor of...

The Iraqi Ministry of Interior has launched investigations into cases of 48 media personnel who were either killed or subjected to acts of violence, according to the director of the ministry's National Command Centre, Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA) has reported. Some details: "Investigations have been launched following the establishment of a partnership with the Journalistic Freedoms Observatory...

The Russian prosecutor-general's office has completed its investigation into the murder of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya and sent the case to court, Interfax news agency reported Thursday. It was not immediately clear Thursday which court will hear the case. Politkovskaya, an award-winning reporter for the Novaya Gazeta, was one of the strongest critics in the Russian media of the...

Leading Yemen journalist Abdel Karim al-Khaiwani has been released from prison shortly after President Ali Abdullah Saleh granted him amnesty and ordered cancellation of his six-year jail sentence that was handed to him earlier for conspiring with anti-government rebels. After leaving prison, al-Khaiwani told the News Yemen website that his release "is a victory for all Yemeni journalists and...

Afghan freelance journalist Jawed Ahmad recently freed after spending 11 months in a US military prison says he was arrested at the suggestion of the Canadian forces. According to a Canadian Press report, Ahmad, known by the nickname Jojo among western journalists in Afghanistan, said, "It was Canadians who told them I was a risk." Ahmad, 22, was detained October 26, 2007, at a NATO base near the...