Legal Action

A 13-year prison sentence has been imposed by a prosecutor on Haci Bogatekin, owner and editor of Turkish fortnightly Gerger Firat for an article accusing another local prosecutor of bias. A four-and-a-half-year sentence was also requested for the editor of a website that posted the article, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Bogatekin’s December 2 court appearance was the seventh time...

Rachid Nini, publisher of Al-Massae newspaper, has been fined another 600,000 dirhams (54,000 euros) by a Casablanca court for allegedly libelling a prominent lawyer. The fine, imposed on December 1, may force Morocco’s leading Arabic-language daily to close down. Al-Massae had already said it would probably have to shut down after an appeal court ruling on October 30 confirming that it would have...

Editors of Egyptian newspaeprs Al- Masry Al-Youm and Al-Wafd and three other journalists have been summoned to appear in court in connection with a ban that has been placed on the publication of any material concerning the Susan Tamim murder case, the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) has reported. On November 22, the prosecution investigated Magdy el-Gallad, the editor of the...

Nigeria President Umaru Yar’Adua has initiated action against independent daily Leadership after it carried an article on the state of health of Yar’Adua saying he had to cancel official engagements for two days because of ill health. The article also said that doctors had been flown in from Saudi Arabia to treat him, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. The publisher of Leadership, Sam...

Singapore's High Court has found the Wall Street Journal Asia in contempt of court for a commentary it published about the city-state in June and July. The court fined Dow Jones Publishing Co (Asia), a subsidiary of News Corp's Dow Jones & Co unit and publisher of the Wall Street Journal's Asian edition, 25,000 Singapore dollars (US$16,573)—the highest amount ever levied for such a case in...

The Bratislava Regional Court has ordered Slovak broadcaster Radio Viva to pay over EUR 30,000 in libel damages to a Slovak judge, in connection with a 2004 report on fraud charges brought against him. The report—an item in a regular evening news broadcast—was based on comments made by then Interior Minister Vladimír Palko at an official press conference. The court found that a statement made by...

An Abu Dhabi court of appeal has suspended the Emarat Alyoum newspaper for defamation. The court also on November 19 fined the newspaper's editor-in-chief, Sami Al-Alraymi, 20,000 dirham (approx US$5,400) and the newspaper 500,000 dirham (approx US$136,000). The sentences are based on a lawsuit filed by the Warsan Stables, based in UAE, in January 2007 following a front-page article published in...

Two Nigerien journalists were sentenced to prison Tuesday on criminal libel charges over editorials critically scrutinising the director of the country's electricity supplier. The two men are free pending an appeal after spending five days in prison. A criminal court judge in the capital, Niamey, sentenced editor Moussa Aksar and reporter Aboubacar Sani of the weekly L'Evènement to three months in...

A district court in russia has ordered a newspaper to refute information, apologise and pay moral damages in defamation case, the Moscow-based Centre for Journalism in Extreme Situations (CJES) has said, quoting delayed reports. On October 10, the Ufa Oktyabrsky District Court issued a ruling in the defamation lawsuit filed by Justice Rosa Gilyazitdinova against newspaper Chas Pik. Na Magistrali...

A freedom of expression advocate has been charged with libel and defamation by the South Sulawesi Regional Police Office in Indonesia, the Jakarta-based Aliansi Jurnalis Independen (AJI) has reported. The chief of the South Sulawesi Regional Police Office, Police Inspector General Sisno Adiwinoto, accused Upi Asmaradana, the coordinator of the Coalition of Journalists against Criminalisation of...