Imprisoned

The secret sentencing of a Uighur website editor emerged this week, eight months after he was tried along with other journalists and dissidents charged in the 2009 unrest in northwestern Xinjiang, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. A court in the far-western district of Aksu sentenced Tursunjan Hezim, who edited a well-known Uighur website, Bilik, to seven years in prison on...

Prison terms of more than 204 years in total were the verdicts for 25 defendants who attended a demonstration in October 2008. Journalist Vedat Yilidiz from the Dicle News Agency (DIHA) and Guneydogu Ekspres (South-east Express) newspaper reporter Lokman Dayan were among those convicted in a hearing which took place on February 24. Yilidiz and Dayan were attending the protest march on assignment...

A court in Angola's southwestern province of Namibe sent a journalist to prison on Thursday without due process over his coverage of a sexual harassment scandal that implicated the province's top judicial official, according to local journalists and news reports. Judge Manuel Araujo sentenced Armando José Chicoca, a freelancer who reports for US government-funded broadcaster Voice of America (VOA)...

Turkish journalist Ahmet Topcu has been sentenced to eleven months in prison in connection with his criticism of a mayor. In June 2010, Halil Bakirci, mayor of Rize (eastern Black Sea coast) and a member of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), had proposed that "Kurds should have co-wives" in order to solve the Kurdish question. The mayor was broadly criticised for his suggestion and...

Mir Hossein Mousavi, owner of the suspended newspaper Kalameh Sabaz, his wife, author Zahra Rahnavard, and Mehdi Karoubi, owner of the suspended Etemad Melli, and his wife have been arrested in Iran, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejei, the Tehran public prosecutor, told a press conference on February 27 that the two newspaper...

An Istanbul court on Friday ordered three online journalists detained on charges of “inciting hatred and hostility through the media,” membership of a “terrorist organisation” and obtaining and publishing confidential state documents. They are facing possible sentences of more than 20 years in jail, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported They are Soner Yalçin...

Andrzej Poczobut, a Grodno correspondent for the largest Polish daily, Gazeta Wyborcza, has been sentenced to prison. According to reports in the local press, the Oktyabrsky District Court in Minsk sentenced Poczobut to 15 days in jail on charges of "participation in the unsanctioned protest rally" that followed the December 19 presidential elections. Poczobut covered the protests for Gazeta...

Taghi Rahmani, a veteran independent journalist and staunch free speech activist, was picked up at his Tehran home on Wednesday by men in plain-clothes and was taken to an unknown location, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. At the same time, several journalists and bloggers have been summoned for questioning by the Revolutionary Guards and the...

Yet another Burmese journalist has been given a long jail term, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) and Burma Media Association (BMA). A Rangoon court sentenced video reporter Maung Maung Zeya on February 4 to five years in prison for two violations of the Unlawful Association Act, one year under the Immigration Act (for crossing the border illegally) and...

Harsh prison sentences given to two journalists Friday under Rwanda's vague and sweeping laws against "genocide ideology" and "divisionism" will have a chilling effect on the Rwandan press, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. A panel of three High Court judges in the capital, Kigali, sentenced Agnès Uwimana, former editor of the now-defunct private weekly Umurabyo, to 17 years in...