Follow-up

There have been mixed feelings about the guilty verdicts and sentences ranging from 4 to 30 years in prison that a court in San Salvador passed Wednesdat on 11 of the 31 people, mainly gang members, who were tried for the September 2009 murder of Franco-Spanish documentary filmmaker and journalist Christian Poveda. “The sequence of events and the immediate motive seem clear but was a two-day trial...

A special five-judge panel named by the Philippines Court of Appeal in Manila may free the suspected mastermind behind the Maguindanao massacre, or release him on a technicality. Lawyers for Zaldy Ampatuan, the former governor of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, have entered a plea for the charges against their client to be dropped, according to New York-based Press freedom group...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned Wednesday’s decision by a court in Tual, in the eastern province of Maluku, to acquit three men of the murder of Sun TV cameraman Ridwan Salamun, who was killed on August 21, 2010 while covering a clash between the inhabitants of neighbouring villages. The press freedom organisation called for a judicial review of the...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has expressed concern over the safety of a Cameroonian editor who is being prosecuted in connection with a leaked official document, according to local journalists and news reports. On February 24, a public prosecutor in Yaoundé charged Raphaël Nkamtchuen, editor of the periodical La Boussole, with "unauthorised communication with a detainee" and...

Russian investigators have pledged to re-open investigations into the cases of five murdered journalists. Valery Ivanov, Natalia Skryl, Aleksei Sidorov, Yuri Shchekochikhin and Vagif Kochetkov were all killed—or are suspected to have been killed—in connection with their journalistic activities. They are all Writers in Prison Committee (WiPC) of PEN International cases from the last nine years...

Ukrainian authorities are threatening to upend progress in the 10-year-old investigation into the September 2000 abduction and murder of independent journalist Georgy Gongadze, according to New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The Kyiv Court of Appeals on Wednesday ruled to reject a second appeal by Myroslava Gongadze, the journalist's widow, against the...

An imprisoned Australian newspaper publisher who appeared in court in Burma was told he would remain in jail until at least March 3, when he was scheduled to appear in court again, according to new.com.au. Ross Dunkley, editor of the Rangoon-based English-language weekly The Myanmar Times, was arrested on February 10 for allegedly violating Burmese immigration codes. The case attracted significant...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has expressed concern over inconsistencies in Thailand's official investigation into the killing of Reuters cameraman Hiro Muramoto, who was killed by gunfire while covering clashes between anti-government protesters and security forces last April 10 in Bangkok. Thailand's Department of Special Investigation told reporters Monday that its investigations...

The Peruvian journalist deported by the United States to Russia in a spy swap last year says she never spied for Moscow — and that her husband hid his espionage from her until the couple's arrest, the Associated Press (AP) has reported. Vicky Pelaez says she also intends to return to her native country. "I might never forgive him," Pelaez said of her Russian husband, Mikhail Vasenkov, according to...

Thailand's Department of Special Investigation (DSI) has concluded that Reuters cameraman Hiro Muramoto, who was killed during political protests last year, was not shot by security forces, the head of the DSI said Sunday. That conclusion contradicts a preliminary finding in a DSI report leaked to Reuters in December, which indicated the bullet that killed the Japanese journalist on April 10 came...