Harassed

A Bogotá judge has ordered the arrest of Colombian journalist Alejandro Santos Rubino, the director of weekly newsmagazine Semana, for failing to follow the court's instructions in a defamation suit, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. Judge Amanda Vargas de Norato of the Penal Circuit of Bogotá issued an arrest warrant for Santos on Thursday after Semana did not follow the...

Authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have released five journalists of privately-owned Raga TV, after they were arrested on November 19 and held for 24 hours at an undisclosed location, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). “We were all released this evening. We were in trouble over the broadcast of an interview with an opposition figure who made comments seen as offensive...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) and the Journalistic Freedom Observatory (JFO) have renewed their call for the release of photographer Ibrahim Jassam of Reuters news agency, who has been detained by the US Army since September 1, 2008. A contingent of US and Iraqi forces took Jassam from his home in Mahmudiyah in the south of the capital, seizing four cameras, his phone and his laptop computer. He...

The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) has expressed concern at attacks on news media and journalists in Nicaragua, preventing them from covering the unrest following the November 9 elections. Reporting teams from the newspapers La Prensa, El Nuevo Diario and Canal 2 planning to cover pro- and anti-government demonstrations in León were reportedly stoned and prevented by supporters of the...

The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) has accused the German Football Federation of launching an unfair campaign of distortion and lies against a journalist who has criticised its President, Theo Zwanziger, one of the country's leading sports officials. Jens Weinreich, an investigative journalist with Berliner Zeitung, is a specialist in the area of international politics of sports who has...

A newspaper reporter has been imprisoned for two months after having been detained by military personnel when he was on his way to cover a confrontation between opposing gangs of suspected drug traffickers in Arcelia, Guerrero, southern Mexico. According to national and Guerrero-based media outlets, on September 6 a group of approximately 30 men from Mexico State arrived in Guerrero and entered...

Radio Ritmo station in the western Ecuadorian province of Santa Elena has been closed down. The close, according to the Lima-based Instituto Prensa y Sociedad (IPYS), came after the Telecommunications Superintendence (Superintendencia de Telecomunicaciones, SUPERTEL) acted on a resolution by the National Radio and Television Council (Consejo Nacional de Radiodifusión y Televisión, CONARTEL) which...

Moscow prosecutors say they have warned the Russian-language edition of the Newsweek magazine for allegedly insulting Muslims, the Associated Press (AP) has reported. [ Link] The Moscow Prosecutor's Office says the magazine published two stories that could be "insulting or humiliating" to Muslims. It said Tuesday an article also included one of the 2005 Danish cartoons depicting the prophet...

Emmanuel Emeka Asiwe, editor of the Huhuonline ( http://huhuonline.com) website, has been released after a week of interrogation by Nigeria's State Security Service, the domestic intelligence agency, but deplores its refusal to let him to go back to the United States, where he lives. “Irked by websites with political or satirical content, the Nigerian authorities are trying to force online...

The Sudanese police Monday arrested 70 journalists in capital Khartoum where they had gathered to present a memorandum to lawmakers asking them to revise the Press and Media Law and to make it conform to the interim constitution. Scores of journalists rallied outside parliament condemning the censorship which flouts the freedom of expression supposed to be enshrined in Sudan's interim constitution...