Follow-up

Press freedom organisations have heaved a sigh of relief at the release early Wednesday morning local time of BBC correspondent Alan Johnston, who had been held captive for over four months in the Gaza Strip. In the same breath, all have called for global action to protect journalists working in hostile environments. Johnston was abducted while on his way home from his office in Gaza City on the...

Alan Johnston, the BBC journalist held hostage in Gaza, was freed and handed over to Hamas officials early on Wednesday after a late-night deal with the al Qaeda-inspired group that abducted him in March. The 45-year-old Briton was embraced by BBC colleagues after he arrived by car at the home of Hamas's local leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh. Johnston was smiling and looked well despite four months...

The violent physical attack on an investigative journalist in Hungary recently has drawn widespread condemnation from its entire political class as well as the Humgarian society. Hungarian freelance journalist Iren Karman speaks during an interview in her hospital bed in Budapest, Sunday June 24, 2007. The reporter, who became famed after a documentary on so-called 'oil-bleaching crimes' of the...

The mother of a Chinese journalist thrown in jail after US Internet giant Yahoo provided user information to the Chinese government arrived in Washington Thursday to campaign for her son’s release. “There is a lot of international concern, it is not an isolated case now,” Gao Qinsheng told AFP after meeting her American lawyer and the Washington representative of Reporters Without Borders, a press...

The detention of Al-Jazeera assistant cameraman Sami Al-Haj, who tomorrow begins his sixth year without charge or trial in the US military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is “unconstitutional and contrary to international law,” Reporters Without Borders said today, describing the detention centre as “one the biggest legal and humanitarian scandals of recent years” and reiterating its call for its...

The head of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has condemned the brutal murder of two prominent female journalists in Afghanistan. Koïchiro Matsuura decried the “cold-blooded killing Zakia Zaki, founder of one of the first community radio stations run entirely by women in Afghanistan, radio Sada — e — Sulh (Peace) in Jabul Seraj.” He noted that the murder...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has called on Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai to do his utmost to ensure that the killers of the head of Peace Radio, Zakia Zaki, who was regularly threatened by warlords, are tracked down and punished. Two armed men broke into the family home of the head of radio Sada-e-Sulh (Peace Radio) in Jabalussaraj, in the northern province of Parwan, and gunned her down...

(RSF/IFEX) - Madrid investigating judge Santiago Pedraz announced on 24 May 2007 that he has rejected an appeal by the prosecutor’s office against his decision to indict three US soldiers for the murder of Spanish cameraman José Couso, who was killed when a US tank shelled the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad on 8 April 2003. Prosecutor Jesús Alonso had appealed against the indictment on the grounds...

A US military report that exonerated US troops in the killings of two Al-Arabiya journalists at a Baghdad checkpoint in 2004 has failed to address contradictory witness reports, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. This includes statements from Al-Arabiya employees that at least two US soldiers fired directly at the journalists’ vehicle, newly declassified records show. The report...

As a Glebe Coroner’s Court inquest into the murders of cameraman Brian Peters and four other TV journalists in the East Timor town of Balibo on 16 October 1975 draws to a close, Reporters Without Borders today called on deputy state coroner Dorelle Pinch to use all possible national and international police and judicial mechanisms to arrest those responsible. The press freedom organisation said...