Imprisoned

Iran has sentenced a prominent reformist journalist to 16 months in jail on charges of insulting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and undermining the Islamic regime, he told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Sunday. Mashallah Shamsolvaezin heads the Journalists' Association of Iran and was the editor of several reformist dailies closed in a crackdown on the press between 1998 and 2000. "I was sentenced...

Iran’s sustained crackdown on critical voices and China’s brutal suppression of ethnic journalism have pushed the number of journalists imprisoned worldwide to its highest level since 1996, the Committee to Protect Journalists has found. In its annual census of imprisoned journalists, CPJ identified 145 reporters, editors, and photojournalists behind bars on December 1, an increase of nine from

New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called for the release of journalist Jean-Claude Kavumbagu after visiting him in prison in Burundi's capital, Bujumbura. CPJ made the call at a press conference marking the end of a four-day mission to Burundi. CPJ Deputy Director Robert Mahoney and East Africa Consultant Tom Rhodes on Thursday met Kavumbagu, editor of...

Emadoldin Baghi, journalist and emblematic figure in the defence of human rights in Iran, began serving a six-year prison sentence on Sunday. Before turning himself in at Evin prison he said in an interview: In fact neither I nor my lawyers know whether the sentences have been upheld, by what court and in front of which judge! All that happened is that I received a phone call telling me to give...

A one-year prison sentence was imposed on Mohammed Abdulqader al-Jassem, a Kuwaiti writer and journalist, on Monday. A criminal court convicted al-Jassem of criminal defamation in connection with an article he published on his personal news blog, Al-Mizan. The case is only one of 18 that the government has filed against the journalist in the past year, the New York-based Committee to Protect...

A Singapore court Tuesday sentenced British writer Alan Shadrake to six weeks in prison and a fine for 20,000 Singapore dollars (11,320 euros) for criticising the country’s use of the death penalty in his book Once a Jolly Hangman: Singapore Justice in the Dock. Failure to pay the fine would add two weeks to his sentence. Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) deplored the...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has condemned the Singapore High Court's sentencing of British author Alan Shadrake to prison over his book criticizing the nation's judiciary. The court Tuesday sentenced Shadrake, 76, to six weeks in prison, and fined him 20,000 Singapore dollars (US$15,400) for contempt of court, according to international news reports. He was convicted on November 3...

Authorities in Ethiopia's northeastern region of Afar are holding a journalist without charge since September 11, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. Akram Ezedin is jailed in Asaita, the regional capital of Afar. He is 17 years old. His father is Ezedin Mohamed, the editor of Al-Quds, a privately owned Islamic weekly newspaper based in capital city of Addis...

A 13-year prison sentence has been handed down last week by a Burmese court to Nyi Nyi Tun, editor of the Kandarawaddy news publication, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). On October 13, the Seikkan Township court attached to Rangoon's Insein Prison found the journalist guilty of "crimes against the state." He was convicted of violating the Unlawful...

Radio station director Hojatullah Mujadadi is currently the only journalist detained in Afghanistan. Although President Hamid Karzai ordered his release, the National Directorate of Security (NDS), an Afghan intelligence agency, is still holding him in appalling conditions, without allowing him the right to be defended by a lawyer. His arrests violates Afghan law, under which all cases involving...