Legal Action

ARTICLE 19 has welcomed the May 27 decision of Russia's Constitutional Court to uphold the appeal of a former NGO leader against criminal charges which were widely believed to be excessive. Manana Aslamazyan, former director of the Educated Media Foundation, had been charged with smuggling after failing to declare an amount of money she brought into Russia in 2007 which slightly exceeded the legal...

Radio Television Mwangaza (RTM), a privately-owned station broadcasting in Lubumbashi, capital of Katanga province (southeastern DR Congo), has been the target of a slander campaign organised by Honoré Kazadi Lukonde, alias Ngube Ngube, a reported supporter of Katanga Governor Moise Katumbi Chapwe, Journaliste en danger (JED) has reported. During a May 24 press conference held at the Makutano...

Yet another Senegalese journalist has been sentenced on criminal defamation charges within a week. This journalist, according to Afrol News, was found guilty of "publishing false news." Papa Moussa Guèye, director of the private daily L'Exclusif, was handed a six-month suspended prison term by a court in the capital Dakar. His troubles began after his paper published an article on President...

A Tehran revolutionary court's decision to hold Kurdish journalist Mohammad Sadegh Kabovand's trial behind closed doors under article 188 of the criminal code has been condemned by his lawyer, Masomeh Sotoudeh. The trial began on 25 May 2008. "This article can only be used for trials in which the details discussed could offend public morality, such as the trials of rapists," Sotoudeh said. She...

Guinea's media regulator, the National Communication Council (CNC), has suspended La Croisade, a privately-owned Conakry-based newspaper, for two months for publishing an alleged falsehood. The newspaper, suspended on May 19, will be out of circulation until July 19, the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) has reported. In addition, the newspaper's managing editor, Fadjimba Sayon Keita, has...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reiterated a call to Senegalese authorities to end a pattern of criminal defamation prosecutions against the press after a court in the capital, Dakar, sentenced a journalist on Tuesday to a suspended prison term on a charge of "publishing false news," according to news reports and his lawyer. Papa Moussa Guèye, director of the private daily L...

Salimzhan Gaisin, deputy editor-in-chief of the newspaper Saratovsky Reporter, has been found guilty of a crime under Article 129 of the Russian Criminal Code (for "Slander in the Mass Media"), according to the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations (CJES). In summer 2007, a group of residents in the village of Bulgakovka, located in the Voskresensk district of Saratov region, complained to...

Bright Chibvuri, the editor of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Union's bi-weekly newspaper The Worker, has been convicted of contravening section 83(1) of the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA), which criminalises practicing journalism without accreditation. Chibvuri is appealing to the High Court against both the conviction and the sentence. On 29 April, Chibvuri, who...

The Committee to Protect Journalists has condemned criminal defamation convictions handed to two Senegalese journalists on Tuesday last. The two were convicted for reporting on the contents of an anonymous letter critical of top security officials. A criminal court in the capital, Dakar, sentenced Director Jules Diop and Editor-in-Chief Serigne Saliou Samb of private daily newspaper L'Observateur...

An award-winning Iranian journalist was due to return to prison on Tuesday after being allowed three months' leave because of illness, Agence France-Presse (AFP) has reported quoting his lawyer. The return to jail of Emadeddin Baghi, who heads a prisoners' rights group and has openly campaigned against the death penalty in Iran, came just a week after he was awarded a major journalism prize in...