Imprisoned

A Chinese court in the restive western region of Xinjiang has given a Uighur journalist and website manager 15 years in jail for endangering state security by speaking to foreign journalists, his employer said on Friday. Uighurbiz.net, where Gheyret Niyaz worked as an administrator, posted a notice saying he had been sentenced at a hearing on Friday, quoting his wife who was in the court. "Gheyret...

A Khartoum criminal court on Thursday sentenced three senior members of the opposition daily Rai Al Shaab (People’s Opinion) to jail terms ranging two to five years on charges of “publishing incorrect information” and “attacking the state with a view to undermining the constitutional system.” Deputy editor Abuzur Al Amin was given a five-year sentence while editor Ashraf Abdelaziz, and political...

Azerbaijan’s Garadagh District Court in Baku on Tuesday sentenced imprisoned independent editor Eynulla Fatullayev to two and a half years in a strict-regime prison after finding him guilty of drug possession. Fatullayev, a 2009 recipient of CPJ’s International Press Freedom Award, has already served more than three years of an eight and a half year term on a series of fabricated charges...

An appeals court in Tunisia on Tuesday upheld a criminal conviction and prison sentence handed down to Fahem Boukadous, a correspondent for the satellite television station Al-Hiwar al-Tunisi, in connection with his coverage of violent labour protests in the Gafsa mining region in 2008. Boukadous, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), faces a four-year prison term on charges of...

A 70-year-old Panamanian journalist was arrested and jailed Saturday on a 2008 defamation conviction, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. The charges against Carlos Núñez López, stemmed from a 2005 story in the now-defunct weekly newspaper La Crónica about environmental damage in the province of Bocas del Toro, his lawyer, Luis Ferreyra, told CPJ. A landowner alleged his...

A Moroccan court passed a prison sentence Friday to Taoufik Bouachrine, editor of independent daily Akhbar al-Youm, on politicised criminal charges, according to Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). A court in Rabat sentenced Bouachrine to six months in prison on charges of real estate and sales fraud, the editor told New York-based CPJ. He was also fined 500 Moroccan dirhams (US$56) and...

Venezuelan columnist Francisco “Pancho” Pérez has been sentenced to prison on defamation charges, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). On Friday, a court in Carabobo found Pérez, a columnist with the daily El Carabobeño, guilty of defaming Valencia’s mayor Edgardo Parra, the local press reported. He was sentenced to three years and nine months. In two columns published in...

Radio journalist Oswaldo Pereyra Moreno was on Wednesday sentenced to one year in prison on criminal defamation charges in San Lorenzo, northern Peru, according to Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The charges against Pereyra, host of the show 'Hora 13' on Radio Macarena, stemmed from a September 2009 broadcast about an illegal abortion allegedly given to an unnamed 14-year-old girl in a...

A suspended prison sentence was handed to a Gabonese journalist this week over an article raising questions about the unsolved murder of a government official, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). On Monday, a criminal court in the capital, Libreville, convicted Jonas Moulenda, a reporter with the state-owned daily L’Union, on charges of criminal defamation and gave him a...

Istanbul’s Yargıtay High Court handed down on Friday a 15-month prison sentence to Turkish journalist Irfan Aktan, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Aktan was found guilty of “producing terrorist propaganda” in an article published in an issue of the biweekly Express in October 2009. The article described scepticism among Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) members toward a...