Imprisoned

Angolan journalist Felisberto da Grâça Campos was sentenced Monday by an Angolan court to six months in prison for allegedly defaming former justice minister Paulo Tjipilika. The journalist was sentenced on charges of defamation, libel, and abuse of the press, according to the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA). Grâça Campos is the director of the weekly Semanario Angolese. The state argues...

A court in Azerbaijan convicted a newspaper editor of state treason Tuesday and sentenced him to 10 years in prison, the Associated Press (AP) has eported. Novruzali Mammadov, the editor of Talysh Sado, or Voice of the Talysh, was arrested in February 2007 together with the paper's administrator, Elman Guliyev, who also was found guilty Tuesday and sentenced to six years imprisonment. The editor's...

Mallam Saidu Sarki Usman, the political editor of the private daily newspaper Leadership, based in Abuja, Nigeria's Federal Capital Territory, was ordered on June 20 to be remanded into prison custody. The order was issued by a Chief Magistrate Court presided over by Alhaji Salihu Attahiru in Minna, Niger State, North-central Nigeria. Usman is accused of allegedly publishing an "injurious...

A new 90-day extension of a detention order has been issued against Sri Lankan journalist J.S. Tissainayagam, who has been held without charge since his arrest on March 8. Tissainayagam is being detained under the Emergency Regulations (2005) Act. The latest detention order was issued by the Terrorist Investigation Division (TID) of the Sri Lankan police force on June 5. TID has refused to provide...

Nsimba Embete Ponte, editor of the privately-owned twice-weekly newspaper "L'interprète", and his assistant, Davin Ntondo Nzovuangu, were transferred June 6 from the National Intelligence Agency (ANR), on the bank of the Congo River, near the prime minister's office, to the court of Matete, in Kinshasa, according to Journaliste en danger (JED). The two journalists were held incommunicado, for 90...

A six-year jail sentence has been handed down to an outspoken Yemeni journalist accused of conspiring with anti-government rebels. A state security court in Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, Monday sentenced Abdel Karim al-Khaiwani, editor of an opposition news website, to six years in prison for being an alleged member of a cell of anti-government rebels and conspiring to carry out attacks on government...

Six-month prison sentences have been passed by a court in the southwestern city of Bulawayo on three South African drivers for “unauthorised possession of TV broadcast equipment.” “The Zimbabwean authorities stop at nothing to control and punish foreign news media and anyone else who is liable to draw attention to the disastrous situation in the Zimbabwe,” Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières...

In what PEN has called a "shocking and very discouraging turn of events," writer and independent journalist Normando Hernández González has been removed from a hospital where he was receiving essential medical treatment and returned to Kilo 7 Prison in Camagüey, Cuba, where he is reportedly now being held in complete isolation in life-threatening conditions. According to PEN's information, on May...

After being held for 19 days on questionable drug-trafficking charges in Puentecilla prison in the central state of Guanajuato, El Tiempo publisher Jesús Lemus Barajas was transferred Tuesday to a high-security federal prison in Puente Grande, in the neighbouring state of Jalisco, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. The authorities said he had to be moved because he was a “dangerous...

A prison official has refused to release a radio commentator in the Philippines jailed for libel in 2007, despite a court order calling for his release on parole, according to the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR). The warden of the Davao Penal Colony (Dapecol) in Davao del Norte refused on May 26 to release radio broadcaster Alexander "Alex" Adonis, despite his having been...