Harassed

Press freedom groups are calling for transparency in the investigation of two journalists arrested on bribery charges in northern Shanxi province. Shanxi public security officials told local journalists on Monday that Guan Jian, a reporter for Beijing-based weekly Wangluo Bao (Network News) who had been missing for 15 days, is in custody in neighbouring Hubei province on suspicion of accepting...

An independent Kazakh journalist is being continually harassed by the country's National Security Committee (KNB), which wants him to reveal how he obtained an internal KNB memo. The harassment led Ramazan Esergepov to seek refuge inside the US consulate in Almaty. “The pressure applied to Esergepov was out of all proportion,” Reporters sans Frontières said. “KNB should track down the source of...

An Iraqi court on Sunday ordered the release of a freelance photographer working for Reuters after being held by US forces since early September, the news agency has reported. The Iraqi Central Criminal Court ruled there was no evidence against Ibrahim Jassam Mohammed, and ordered that the US military release him from Camp Cropper prison near Baghdad airport. Iraqi prosecutors acknowledged in...

The treatment meted out by the French police to Vittorio de Filippis, former managing editor of leftwing daily Libération, has prompted widespread condemnation and furore. Filippis was manhandled, handcuffed, humiliated in front of his sons, twice forced to strip and submit to body cavity searches and interrogated without lawyers by an investigating magistrate— all over a two-year-old libel case...

Ramattan news agency has closed down all its West Bank offices and suspended its website operations after security officers loyal to Paliestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas raided its headquarters in Ramallah and summoned eight employees for interrogation. Ramattan has accused PA of waging a campaign of harassment and intimidation against its staff in the West Bank. The independent agency...

Fifteen Pakistani journalists returning from a press conference held by Taliban leader Hakeemullah Mehsud in the Orakzai tribal region in the north-west were arrested by the military on November 26, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. They were held for more than five hours at a check-point near Kohat, 60 km south of Peshawar, by security forces who prevented them from continuing their...

Somali police have arrested the director of a radio station in the south-western town of Baidoa. According to the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ), Hilal Sheikh Shuayb of Warsan Radio was arrested following the orders of the governor of Bay Region, Abdifatah Mohamed Ibrahim. The journalist was accused of airing live the judgment of a Baidoa Court judge who ruled on a Transitional...

Joseph Tual, a journalist with the French state-owned TV station France 3, was recently questionedby a court in Lille on suspicion of "violating professional confidentiality" in a report about new developments in the investigation into the 1965 disappearance of Moroccan opposition politician Medhi Ben Barka in Paris. Tual was summoned to a Lille court on November 20 in response to a complaint...

Tamil radio presenter and director of privately-owned radio Vettri FM, ARV Loshan, has been released by Sri Lanka's Terrorist Investigations Department after being held for eight days. His mother told Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) he was not hurt during his imprisonment. The police have for the time being held on to his mobile phones but they will supposedly be returned to him in the...

The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) has expressed great concern over the extent of surveillance by the German Telekom including against journalists, which has taken alarming dimensions in Germany. “It is not acceptable that Telekom could misuse data retention to violate protection of sources and press freedom by engaging in surveillance of journalists, work council representatives and...