Follow-up

The European Court of Human Rights ruled Tuesday that Armenia's repeated denials of a broadcasting licence to the independent A1+ television station violated Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. According to the verdict, the Armenian government must pay the station 20,000 euros (US$31,000) in damages. Famous for its criticism of Armenian authorities, A1+ was forced off the air in...

Colombian journalist Mario Alberto Puello was freed from captivity on June 19 by members of the National Liberation Army (Ejercito de Liberación Nacional, ELN) guerrilla group. ELN members handed Puello, who was abducted on February 17 in La Guajira department, over to International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) personnel, according to Fundación para la Libertad de Prensa (FLIP). Puello and...

Odnei Fernando da Silva, the civilian police inspector who is accused of heading the militia that kidnapped and tortured two O Dia journalists and their driver in Rio de Janeiro's Batan favela on May 14, surrendered to the authorities on June 16. Also known as "01", "Dinei" and "Águia", Da Silva went with his lawyer to the headquarters of the Department for Repression of Criminal Actions and...

The main owner of Armenian-Turkish newspaper Agos and the daily's editor have been acquitted of charges of “trying to obstruct a fair trial” by publishing an editorial that criticised the one-year suspended prison sentences imposed on three of its journalists. Serkis Seropyan, the main owner of Agos and editor Aris Nalci were Wednesday acquitted by a criminal court in the Istanbul district of...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has called on the Pakistani federal government and information minister Sherry Rehman in particular to publish the results of the investigations into the death of Hayatullah Khan, a reporter in Pakistan’s northeastern Tribal Areas, whose body was found two years ago, six months after his still unexplained abduction. "Pakistan is currently outraged by the death of 11...

The trial of the alleged killers of Carlos Quispe Quispe, a journalist on Radio Municipal Pucarani opened Wednesday. The journalist died in Pucarani, in La Paz department, western Bolivia on March 29 after being beaten up by opponents of the mayor. The six defendants, charged with "homicide" and "association to commit a crime", were all in court for the opening of the trial: four municipal...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has appealed for charges to be dropped against Mazen Darwish, the president of its partner organisation, the Syrian Centre for Media & Freedom of Expression, two days ahead of the verdict in his defamation trial on June 18. Darwish, a journalist and human rights activist, was arrested on January 12 while covering violent clashes in the Damascus suburb of Adra and...

Three men have been charged for the killing of Russian journalist and Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya in 2006 but the actual assassin remains at large, investigators said on Wednesday, according to news reports. In a June 18 statement announcing the completion of the inquiry, the investigative committee of the Prosecutor-General's Office named the men accused of her assassination as Sergei...

Three years on, the Danish cartoon wars just won't rub out. Governments are stoking the crisis by instigating protests against the cartoonists or the newspapers that dared to report on the controversy, the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) and other IFEX members have found. Cartoonists and journalists from the Arab world, Europe and the US say that the Danish cartoon crisis is being

Al-Qaida-linked militants freed a popular TV news anchor, and her two assistants late Tuesday, more than a week after snatching them in the volatile southern Philippines island of Jolo. The abductors, identified by police as Abu Sayyaf militants, released ABS-CBN anchor Ces Drilon and the two other captives on Jolo island around 11 p.m. following talks with negotiators, said Director Avelino Razon...