Legal Action

The trial of Baris Pehlivan, producer of the programme “I am a witness” on the 24-hour TV news channel CNN Türk, and Nurettin Yilmaz, a former Kurdish politician and parliamentarian and author of “Witness of the recent past,” will begin in the Istanbul district of Bakirkoy on November 18. Charged with “inciting hatred and hostility” under articles 216 and 218 of the criminal code, they could get...

Tunisian authorities have pressed charges against against TV reporter Fahem Boukadous because of his coverage of this year’s protests in the Gafsa mining region, 350 km south of Tunis. This he did for the independent Tunisian TV station Al-Hiwar Attounsi, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Boukadous is also charged with putting foreign news media in contact with labour leaders in Gafsa...

A Spanish prosecutor has recommended five-month prison sentences for two journalists— reporter Asier Velez de Mendizábal of the daily Gara and photographer Lánder Fernández de Arroyabe of the Argazki Press agency—who covered a demonstration by a radical Basque nationalist group in Pamplona, in the northern region of Navarre. The sentences were requested on November 3 by prosecutor Edilberto...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has called for the release of Shawan Dawodi, the editor of the weekly Hawal, who was sentenced to a month in prison and a fine by a court in the Kurdish city of Sulaymaniyah on November 4 over a series of articles four years ago criticising judicial reform in Iraqi Kurdistan. “There are no legal grounds for this arbitrary sentence as it is based on a law that has...

Fiji's military government has recommended to the High Court sentence to the editor and publisher of Fiji Times to jail. Last week, the newspaper printed a front page apology and admitted that it was in contempt, for publishing a letter critical of the High Court Panel, which made a judgment that the 2006 coup was legal. On Monday, Fiji's Solicitor-General told Justice Thomas Hickie that the...

An Ethiopian Federal High Court judge has convicted an editor on criminal charges of "inciting the public through false rumors" over a reporting mistake, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. Editor-in-Chief Tsion Girima of the private weekly Enbilta is being held in Kality prison, outside the capital, Addis Ababa, pending sentencing on Tuesday. Charged under article 486 of the...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has condemned an Egyptian court’s decision on Saturday to levy steep fines against an editor and reporter for an independent weekly that published a satirical piece about a prominent cleric. A criminal court in Al-Geeza ordered El-Fegr editor Adel Hammouda and writer Mohamed al-Baz to pay fines of 80,000 Egyptian pounds ($14,341) apiece on charges that...

A judge dismissed a libel lawsuit against a reporter who wrote about workplace conditions at the Santa Barbara News-Press, the the Associated Press (AP) has reported. The September 24 ruling by Orange County Superior Court Judge H Warren Siegel in the case of journalist Susan Paterno was made under a California law geared to prevent the silencing of critics through lawsuits. Some backgrounder: "It...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) is asking for the judge to show clemency for journalist Jason Nicholas, independent photographer for the New York Post, currently in jail in Rikers Island, New York for parole violation. Jason Nicholas is scheduled for another parole hearing in front of an administrative judge on October 15. He was one of over 40 journalists arrested while covering the Republican...

A Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter seeking to protect the identity of unidentified sources is asking two judges to stop a deposition intended to reveal who leaked information to him about the investigation of a prosecutor, the Associated Press (AP) has reported. Some details from the AP report: David Ashenfelter of the Detroit Free Press is scheduled to give testimony in a deposition Thursday. A...