An Afghan journalist who faces the death penalty for blasphemy has begun his appeal hearings without a defence lawyer. Sayed Parwez Kambakhsh, 23, on Sunday denied charges and said an earlier confession that prompted a court to sentence him to death in January had been extracted under torture, news reports have said. The charges against Kambakhsh relate to an article he downloaded from the...
Authorities in Somalia’s breakaway region of Puntland freed a broadcast corporation chief held on charges that his media outlets incited political upheaval, he told AFP Saturday.Mowlid Haji Abdi was released late Friday after being detained for hours following a police raid on the premises of Somalia Broadcasting Corporation, which operates radio and television stations. "I got my freedom back...
There's renewed international concern for Sayed Parvez Kambakhsh, a young Afghan journalist sentenced to death for blasphemy. The press freedom group Reporters Without Borders is urging the Afghan government to cooperate with the lawyer of Kambakhsh, who remains jailed in Kabul awaiting an appeal hearing, Radio Free Europe / Radoi Liberty (RFE/RL) has reported. Nearly two months have passed since...
A month after journalist Fadel Shana was killed by an Israeli tank crew in the Gaza Strip, Reuters renewed its demand on Thursday for a prompt explanation from the Israeli army of why it fired on its cameraman. Shana, a 24-year-old Palestinian, was killed on April 16 along with eight mostly teenage bystanders by darts known as flechettes that burst out of a tank shell in mid-air. Shana had been...
Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has called for the definitive release of journalist and human rights activist Emadoldin Baghi who suffered a heart attack in his cell at Tehran’s Evin prison, after being returned there on April 15 following a temporary release for health reasons. “We urge the Iranian authorities to act now to avoid putting the journalist’s life at risk,” Paris-based RSF said. “He...
Spanish journalist Ricardo Ortega was shot dead by foreign soldiers in Haiti in 2004, according to a court order from the Caribbean country, the contents of which were made public by Ortega's family on Friday, Reuters has reported. Ortega died while covering a demonstration pitting supporters and detractors of ousted president Jean-Bertrand Aristide in March. Originally Spanish media reported that...
With 93 journalists killed, 2007 was another deadly year. Iraq proved again to be the most hazardous place on earth from which to report, with the conflict accounting for almost half of all journalists killed during the year. In Somalia, another conflict zone, eight journalists were killed. This tally is according to the IPI World Press Freedom Review 2007, which is the Vienna-based International...
The US-run Guantanamo Bay detention camp is the worst prison ever, Sudanese al-Jazeera journalist Sami al-Haj who was released from the prison days ago said Monday, according to a Xinhua report. In a speech broadcast live on Sudanese television, ai-Haj, who returned to Sudan on Friday, said he spent 2,340 days in the "most heinous prison mankind has ever known," and that jailers there insulted...
To mark World Press Freedom Day, Moroccan journalist Mustafa Hormatallah began a three-day hunger strike on Friday to protest his imprisonment in Casablanca, while journalists led by the National Syndicate of the Moroccan Press planned to stage a sit-in on Saturday. Hormatallah, a journalist with the independent weekly Al-Watan Al An, was sentenced in August 2007 to eight months in jail, and his...
The Israeli military said Wednesday that initial findings from its investigation into the killing of a Reuters news agency cameraman indicated that troops did not realize they were firing at a journalist, the Associated Press (AP) has reported. Palestinian cameraman Fadel Shana, 23, was killed April 16 by tank fire while covering fighting between Israeli troops and Gaza militants. His colleague...
