Legal Action

US freelance journalist Joe Sharkey, who covered a 2006 plane crash in Brazil in which he was a passenger, is facing an onerous civil defamation suit for comments he said were wrongly attributed to him. On the third anniversary of the accident, the Committee to Protect Journalists called on Brazilian judicial authorities to dismiss the case, which is based on the tenuous claim that the comments...

Turkey’s tax ministry has imposed an unprecedented TL 3.75 billion, or €1.74 billion fine on a media group, Dogan Yayin, a conglomerate of newspapers and television stations that has been extremely critical of the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The huge penalty, handed down earlier this week following examinations of tax reports from 2005, 2006 and 2007, follows a €345 million fine against...

Finnish photojournalist Markus Pentikäinen, convicted in 2007 for ignoring a police order to stop reporting at the scene of a 2006 demonstration in Helsinki, is to take his case to the European Court of Human Rights, according to the International Press Institute (IPI. The move comes after a Finnish Supreme Court decision of September 1 which gave him "no leave to appeal," according to weekly...

The Supreme Court in Azerbaijan has upheld the decision of the Sabail District Court regarding the confiscation and destruction of the manuscript of a book that imprisoned Azadlig newspaper editor-in-chief Ganimat Zahid was writing, reported Zahid's spouse, Ayanda Mursaliyeva, who visited him in prison on August 31, the Institute for Reporters' Freedom and Safety (IRFS) has reported. According to...

An Amsterdam court has ruled that the Associated Press (AP) violated the Dutch royal family’s privacy by distributing photos of them in an Argentina ski resort. The court on august 28 ordered the news agency to pay 1,000 euros for each further publication of the photos up to a ceiling of 50,000 euros. “We are shocked and disappointed by the court’s decision,” Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) said....

A magistrate in Zambia issued a summons for the entire editorial staff of the southern African country's largest independent newspaper to appear in court on Wednesday on contempt charges, according to local journalists and news reports. The ruling was prompted by an op-ed commenting on the prosecution of the paper's news editor. The Post published on Thursday an op-ed by a US-based contributor...

Tamil journalist JS Tissainayagam has been sentenced to 20 years hard labour on charges of supporting terrorism and inciting racial hatred, becoming the first journalist to be convicted under Sri Lanka's draconian anti-terrorism law. An English-language columnist for the Sri Lankan Sunday Times and editor of the news website OutreachSL, Tissainayagam was arrested on March 7, 2008. He spent five...

Four journalists from Uganda's largest independent newspaper are facing criminal prosecutions, joining four others already charged since 2007, according to local journalists and news reports. Criminal prosecutions against the Monitor are on the rise against the backdrop of mounting national tensions in the lead-up to general elections in 2011. This month, President Yoweri Museveni, who is expected...

Prosecutors in Abakan, the capital of the Republic of Khakassia in southern Siberia, have filed defamation charges against online editor Mikhail Afanasyev, over a blog entry about Monday's explosion at Russia's largest hydroelectric plant that killed dozens of workers, according to news reports. Prosecutors opened a criminal probe against Afanasyev on Wednesday, after he and his two colleagues at...

A Gambian court has sentenced six journalists to two years in jail and imposed heavy fines on them on six counts of sedition and criminal defamation. Failure to pay the fines will lead to an additional two years in jail. The six journalists, working for two private newspapers—the Point and Foroyaa—had republished a June 11 Gambian Press Union statement criticising President Yahya Jammeh's comments...