Burma's longest-serving political prisoner, journalist Win Tin, was freed Tuesday after 19 years in detention. He emerged from Yangon's Insein prison still dressed in light-blue prison clothes after benefiting from an amnesty announced by the military government for thousands of detainees ahead of the elections promised for 2010. "I will keep fighting until the emergence of democracy in this...
Nigeria's National Broadcasting Commission restored Friday the broadcasting licence of Channels Television, two days after it was revoked for mistakenly reporting a fabricated report that the president may resign due to his health. NBC said the station apologised and accepted responsibility for the false report, according to Reuters. NBC director-general Yomi Bolarinwa said the commission was...
Local authorities in St Paul, Minneapolis, will not prosecute journalists who were arrested on misdemeanour charges during the Republican national convention on September 1. The Minneapolis Star Tribune newspaper reported quoted St Paul mayor Chris Coleman as saying the city authorities have decided not to prosecute journalists charged with misdemeanour offences and that they will use a “very...
The US military has freed Afghan journalist held Jawed Ahmad who was held as an "enemy combatant" at the main American base in Afghanistan. Ahmad, who worked for Canadian TV network CTV, was handed over to Afghan authorities Sunday, a spokesman of the US-led coalition announced. He is no longer considered a threat. Ahmad, 22, was detained October 26, 2007, at a NATO base near the city of Kandahar...
The Al-Jazeera television network has broadcast a film clip of kidnapped Canadian journalist Amanda Lindhout and an Australian colleague, says a Canadian Press (CA) report). Lindhout, a freelance television and print reporter, and photographer Nigel Brennan, were abducted almost a month ago while on assignment in Somalia. The Al-Jazeera video shows Lindhout wearing an Arab robe and surrounded by...
A Moroccan court decision Thursday overturned a two-year prison sentence and a fine against blogger and journalist Mohamed Erraji. On September 9, the court in Agadir, in southwest Morocco, convicted Erraji in a 10-minute trial¸ sentencing him to prison and a fine of 5,000 dinars (US$626), according to his family and local news reports. Erraji, 29, is a contributor to HesPress, a Moroccan daily...
Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has called for a review of the trial of alleged regional drug baron Ceferino García, who was acquitted by a court in Maturín, in the northeastern Venezuelan state of Monagas, on August 28 of masterminding the murder of Mauro Marcano. A radio and newspaper journalist, Marcano was gunned down outside his Maturín home on September 1, 2004. "This verdict is a victory...
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has welcomed the release of a cameraman held by US forces in Iraq, and called on the military to release a freelance journalist working for Reuters who has been held since Tuesday. Omar Husham, 28, a cameraman with Baghdad TV, a satellite channel owned by the Iraqi Islamic Party, was freed on Friday without charges after one day in custody, according to...
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) welcomed Tuesday the release of Telewizja Polska (TVP) crew members who were detained outside the Georgian village of Karaleti by South Ossetian militia members, and taken into custody in the regional capital, Tskhinvali, on Monday. Reporter Dariusz Bohatkiewicz told CPJ that authorities in Tskhinvali transferred him and his colleagues - cameraman Marcin...
Roza Malsagova, the editor of the Ingushetiya.ru website, Ingushetia’s only source of independent news and information, has just lost an ally in her struggle against the government’s determination to suppress all coverage of human rights abuses in this southern Russian republic, which adjoins Chechnya and which is contaminated by the region’s conflicts. Magomed Yevloyev, the site’s owner
