Legal Action

Contempt of court proceedings have been started against the editor and owner of a New Zealand newspaper over the publication of suppressed police evidence collected during last year's police raids in the Ureweras. Solicitor-General David Collins filed papers in the High Court in Wellington on Monday against editor Tim Pankhurst and Fairfax New Zealand, the publisher of the Dominion Post, according...

A Moroccan court has fined the country's leading newspaper a whopping 6 million dirhams for mistakenly alleging that a judge had attended a gay wedding party in the Muslim country. Rachid Nini, editor of the daily Al-Massae said the paper would appeal the verdict and expressed concern that the authorities were using the courts to try and shut down a troublesome critic, according to Reuters. Last...

Leading Egyptian newspaper editor Ibrahim Eissa has been sentenced to six months in prison for "reporting" on President Hosni Mubarak's health problems. Eissa, editor of Al-Dustour, will post the 200 Egyptian pounds bail (US$40, €25) to avoid serving his sentence while he appeals. "The state has been put at risk," Judge Sherif Kamel Mustafa said in a Cairo court, while reading out the verdict...

Leading Egyptian editor Ibrahim Eissa will Wednesday face charges of publishing "fake news about the president's health which afflicted the national economy." If convicted, Eissa faces up to three years in prison and a fine of as much as 20,000 Egyptian pounds ($3,600). This in the backdrop if the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) condemning the Egyptian government over raids and...

Syrian authorities are insisting on having a military tribunal examine charges against journalist Mazen Darwish, head of the Syrian Centre for Media Freedom and Freedom of Expression. He is accused of "libelling and defaming the state's bodies" by publishing a feature report about the January 2008 riots in Damascus, and for criticising the security bodies' failure to protect the citizens killed in...

Tesco Lotus, one of the biggest retailers in Thailand, has filed two staggering defamation cases against a Thai columnist and a former Member of Parliament, sending a strong message to civil society and the press to tread carefully before criticising the retailing giant in Thailand. Tesco Lotus is suing columnist/academic Kamol Kamoltrakul and former Thai National Legislative Assembly (NLA) member...

Journalist Sanjuana Martínez Montemayor has been informed that her services will not longer be required by the daily Milenio, in Monterrey, Mexico, due to a "restructuring of the newspaper." The last article published by the journalist was titled "Ernestina: a year of ignominy" in the newspaper's 'A Bocajarro' column. In the article, Martínez Montemayor criticised the federal government's handling...

A Jordanian court has handed down jail terms of three months each on five newspaper journalists, including two prominent editors, for contempt of court and defamation. Editor Taher al-Adwan and reporter Sahar Qassam of the Arabic daily Al-Arab al-Youm, former Ad-Dustour editor Osama Sharif, and Ad-Dustour reporter Fayez Louzi were sentenced Thursday under the penal code to three months in prison...

Reporters Without Borders deplores A Kuwait City criminal court has withdrawn the licences of two weekly newspapers, Al-Abraj and Al-Shaab. The court in separate cases on March 8 fined Al-Abraj editor Mansur Ahmad Muhareb Al-Hayni and Al-Shaab editor Hamed Turki Abu Yabes 9,000 dinars (21,000 euros) each. Hayni was convicted of besmirching the prime minister’s reputation while Yabes was convicted...

An Egyptian court sentenced a journalist to one year in jail on Monday for libelling imprisoned opposition leader Ayman Nour and his wife, Reuters has reported. But Nour, who is serving a five-year sentence on what he says are baseless fraud charges, asked the court to drop the custodial sentence because he does not approve of jailing journalists for publishing offences. The journalist, Taher...