Legal Action

A criminal defamation case has been filed by Pradel Henriquez, the director-general of state-owned Télévision Nationale d’Haïti (TNH), in Port-au-Prince against three TNH journalists – Eddy Jackson Alexis, Josias Pierre and Jacques Innocent – who say they were fired for being critical of President-Elect Michel Martelly. Alexis was TNH’s news editor. Henriquez, who also heads state-owned Radio...

Beijing’s reach does not stop at China’s borders. The Chinese government successfully pressured the Vietnamese authorities to arrest two people, Vu Duc Trung and Le Van Thanh, for operating an unauthorised short-wave radio station that was broadcasting in Chinese from a farm outside Hanoi, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). The organisation is worried by...

The Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM) is protesting over the criminal sentence for libel handed down to Stojan Markovic, owner, director and editor of Radio Ozon, an ANEM member station based in Cacak. The Primary Court in Cacak found Markovic guilty of slandering former minister Velimir Ilic. The decision was based on Markovic's comment "The Time for Settling the Bills has Come...

Ecuador's President Rafael Vicente Correa Delgado has filed a lawsuit against Juan Carlos Calderón and Christian Zurita, investigative journalists and authors of the book Gran Hermano (Big Brother). The lawsuit is based on the book's content, a journalistic investigation into contracts signed between the president's brother, Fabricio Correa, and the State. According to the Pichincha Judiciary's...

Legal action has been taken by Portugal’s prosecutor-general Fernando Pinto Monteiro against Lisbon-based weekly Sol, its director José Antonio Saraiva and two of its journalists who allegedly infringed his “credibility, reputation and intellectual property rights.” The action, in the form of a private prosecution in a civil court on March 10, concerns an article published on the front page of the...

Gatot Machali, the manager of Radio Era Baru, a radio station based in Batam (in Riau province), appeared before a Jakarta administrative court Tuesday on a charge of “broadcasting without authorisation and disrupting neighbouring frequencies” under the Telecommunications Law He could be sentenced to six years in jail if found guilty. The court has not yet issued a verdict. Paris-based press...

A trial has been opened against Radikal newspaper reporter Ertugrul Mavioglu following the filing of a complaint with the Istanbul Chief Prosecution, according to press freedom group BIANET. Mavioglu stands accused of "spreading propaganda for an illegal organisation" on the grounds of his interview with Murat Karayilan, leader of the armed outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), at the Qandil...

Two Comorian journalists charged on Monday with "publishing false news" in their coverage of the formal handover of power between President Ahmed Abdallah Mohamed Sambi and President-elect Ikililou Dhoinine could face up to six months in prison if convicted, according to local journalists and news reports. In January, the European Union urged Comorian authorities to proceed with the handover of...

A Welsh councillor has been ordered to pay what is believed to be the first libel damages to a political rival as a result of comments posted to Twitter, says a Press Gazette report. Caerphilly county councillor Colin Elsbury was ordered to pay £3,000 damages plus costs after using the social network to wrongly claim Eddie Talbot had been removed from a polling station by police during a by...

The 6th Judicial Circuit Civil Law Court at the Temple of Justice in Liberia has denied a motion for retrial filed by legal counsellors representing the Frontpage Africa newspaper and its editor-in-chief, Rodney Sieh, in a US$2 million libel suit filed by former agriculture minister Chris Toe. In his final ruling on February 23, Judge Yussif Kaba said the court is of the opinion that the jury...