Legal Action

The conviction for “electoral propaganda” against daily A Folha de São Paulo and magazine Veja after they published interviews with a prospective candidate to municipal elections in São Paulo in southeast Brazil has been described as "absurd". Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) said Thursday that the verdict placed an unacceptable limit on press freedom and that reform of the current...

The Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE) has expressed concern at the court decision allowing police to use photographs belonging to the Hamilton Spectator. Officers executed a search warrant on May 6, 2008, in order to obtain photos of a highway blockade in Caledonia. Brian Rogers, representing the Hamilton Spectator, was in court on June 12 to fight the issuing of the warrant, but his...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has denounced repeated efforts by authorities in the southern Russian republic of Ingushetia to shut down the regional news website Ingushetiya—one of the few remaining independent news outlets covering the volatile North Caucasus—for alleged extremism. On June 6, Kuntsevo district court in Moscow ordered the closure of the website, alleging it contained...

In yet another move that will worsen the flow of—and lack of access to—information in Zimbabwe, the government has slapped an import duty on all newspapers, magazines and periodicals coming into the country. On June 8, the state-owned Herald newspaper reported that all "foreign newspapers sold in Zimbabwe will now have to pay import duty, as the government moves to protect Zimbabwean media space"...

Suspended prison sentences have been passed on Iranian journalists Said Matinpour and Yaghoub Salaki Nia in separate cases. Matinpour's jail term was eight years. Nia's was one year. In each case, the sentences were handed down in closed door hearings without their lawyers being present, Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Both plan to appeal. At the same time, RSF has...

The publisher of a daily newspaper critical of the Arroyo government has been found guilty of libel and sentenced to a minimum of six months to a maximum of two years in prison. She was also ordered to pay P5 million (US$113,480) in moral damages and P33,732.25 (US$765) in civil damages, the Manila-based Centre for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR) has reported. Makati Regional Trial Court...

A high-ranking police official has filed two separate criminal complaints alleging that a BBC correspondent insulted the monarchy—charges that the journalist and the BBC have called unfounded. The police official, Lt Col Wattanasak Mungkandee, reportedly brought the complaints in a personal capacity against BBC correspondent Jonathan Head. Violations of lese majeste laws are a criminal offence...

There has been an upsurge in legal proceedings against members of the Algerian news media as the trial of three journalists on the daily Liberté ended with the state prosecutor making an outrageous call for jail sentences against them. The prosecutor on Sunday called for two months imprisonment for editor, Ali Ouafak, managing editor, Farid Alilat, and cartoonist Ali Dilem for “defamation” under...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned the methods being used by the Sudanese government to censor Khartoum-based newspapers. In the latest case early Monday, members of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM)—the political wing of the former rebel group in the south that is now part of a unity government—participated in a raid on the privately-owned Arabic-language daily Ajras Al...

ANHRI has condemned the persistence of Egyptian Islamist preacher Sheikh Wajdi Ghunaim in his continuous harassment of the Bahraini newspaper Al-Ayam, and his prosecution of Eisa Al Shayji, the newspaper's editor-in-chief, and journalist-writer Saeed Al-Hamad. Ghunaim is suing the journalists for alleged slander before the Criminal Court. Ghunaim—an Egyptian preacher expelled from Bahrain in...