Follow-up

Guatemala President Álvaro Colom has broached the possibility of declassifying a number of military documents that would shed light on the fate of thousands of Guatemalans who disappeared during the years of internal armed struggle in the country. The president, on February 25 during an event marking National Victims' Day, said his initiative is supported by a number of high-ranking military...

The United Nations has sharply criticised as inadequate a Congolese military investigation and murder trial which followed the killing of a UN radio journalist by armed men in military uniform last June, news agencies have reported. Serge Maheshe was shot in the legs and chest by two men on June 13 as he was leaving a friend's home in the eastern town of Bukavu, where he was editor-in-chief of UN...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has welcomed the surrender of a suspect to police in the 2004 murder of Filipino broadcaster Herson Hinolan, but is concerned that the move came shortly after the withdrawal of an important prosecution witness from the case. Alfredo Arcenio, a former mayor of the town of Lezo, turned himself in to the Regional Trial Court in the nearby town of Kalibo...

Four members of the military police have been in connection with the May 2007 murder of Luiz Carlos Barbon Filho, a journalist based in São Paulo state of Brazil. “These arrests constitute the first step in a victory over impunity, one that could not be taken for granted given that those arrested are police officers,” Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) said in a statement. “It is an...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) today called on the authorities of Niger to release editor, Aboubacar Gourouza, charged with libeling a political leader and for contempt of court. “We can’t understand why the authorities in Niger have decided to persecute the journalists at this point,” said Gabriel Baglo, Director of the IFJ Africa office. “It is wrong for journalists to be...

Iraqi authorities have vowed to hunt down the killers of journalists, days after the head of the country's biggest journalist organisation became the latest media worker to meet a violent death, Reuters has reported. The interior ministry said 270 journalists have been killed in Iraq since the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, and the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called...

The Belarusian Supreme Court has ordered the early release of Aleksandr Sdvizhkov, former deputy editor of the now-shuttered independent newspaper Zgoda, who was sentenced in January to three years in a high-security prison for reprinting controversial Danish cartoons of the prophet Mohammed in 2006. “We’re relieved at the Belarusian Supreme Court’s decision to grant early release to Aleksandr...

The International Federation of Journalists has called on journalists’ unions to support a global day of action on Saturday to renew efforts to combat impunity and to mark the anniversary of a media massacre in Latin America. IFJ has also welcomed today’s launch of special book in Lima marking the 25th anniversary of a tragic incident when eight journalists and a media worker were brutally killed...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has welcomed the arrests of two men suspected of murdering Aklan broadcaster Rolando Ureta on January 3, 2001. According to the National Union of Journalists, Philippines (NUJP), an IFJ affiliate, Jessie Ticar surrendered to police after learning that fellow suspect Amador Raz was captured on November 26 after a Kalibo court issued a warrant for...

The man found who killed an Ottawa broadcaster in 1995 will appear in a Buffalo court this morning after a U.S. border officer was punched in the face. Officials of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection said Jeffrey Arenburg, 50, of Barrie, was on a bus crossing the border at the Peace Bridge on Thursday when the incident occurred. Arenburg, who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, was found not...