Legal Action

Kuwaiti Prime Minister Nasser AlAhmad AlSabah has filed a complaint against Ibrahim Eissa, editor of Egyptian daily Al-Dustour and Kuwaiti journalist Mohammed Alweshaihi accusing them of insult and libel. Lately, Al-Dustour had reported on the trials of Kuwaiti journalist Mohamed AlJassim, and slammed the Kuwaiti PM for being behind them, the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) has...

Journalists employed by two radio stations in Yopal, the capital of the northeastern department of Casanare, stopped work today Thursday and demonstrated silently, with their mouths gagged, in the city's main square to protest against a lawsuit targeting eight of their colleagues and to demand respect for freedom of information. Eight journalists who work for Violeta Stéreo or La Voz de Yopal are...

Referans newspaper writer Cengiz Çandar is facing a prison sentence of between one and three years in Turkey over an allegation of "insulting a public servant in the commission of his duty". The charges are based on Çandar's criticism of the fact that a secret witness in the Hrant Dink murder case was not brought to the court in an February 8, 2010 hearing, according to IPS Communication...

Ato Kwamena Dadzie, news editor of Joy FM, an Accra-based independent radio station, was charged with a criminal offence for refusing to reveal the station's sources of information for a July 5 news item, according to the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA). The station had carried a report to the effect that an umbrella body of local contractors, the Ghana Real Estates Developers Association...

A controversial article by writer Yilmaz Ozdil was within the "limits of press freedom", the Diyarbakir Public Prosecution in Turkey has decided. In the April 14 article, which was published in Hürriyet newspaper, Ozdil had defended a physical attack on Kurdish politician Ahmet Türk. The Press Council had previously reached a similar conclusion regarding Ozdil's column, IPS Communication...

The National Press Council (CNP), the print media regulatory body in Côte d'Ivoire, imposed a fine of three million CFA francs (about US$6,000) on Regie Cyclone Company, publishers of Le Temps, a pro-government daily newspaper, according to the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA). MFWA's correspondent reported that the fine was as a result of the newspaper's publishing of the results of...

An Egyptian court has sentenced a jailed leader to a year in prison for defaming a former minister more than 14 years ago, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). A Cairo appeals court last month sentenced Magdy Hussein, who served as editor of the long-banned opposition newspaper Al-Shaab, to a one-year jail term in a defamation case filed in 1996 by the family of then-Interior...

Syrian authorities are till pressing criminal defamation charges against investigative journalists Bassam Ali and Suhaila Ismail. The journalists co-wrote two investigative reports in 2005 and 2006 on corruption and the misuse of public funds in the Public Company for Fertilisers in Syria. They concluded that almost 2 billion Syrian pounds (US$43 million) were misappropriated in one year. The...

Shwan Ahmed, a freelance Iraqi journalist, is facing criminal defamation charges based on a series of articles he wrote alleging corruption in Sulaimaniyah, in northeastern Iraq. Ahmed told the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) he was threatened by one of the parties in the case. Ahmed said charges were filed against him and that he received the threats after publishing a...

Bahraini authorities have pressed charges against Mohammed al-Sawad, a reporter for the independent daily Al-Bilad, who is accused of violating a government-imposed gag order, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. The order was issued in the case of former minister of state, Mansour bin Rajab, who was dismissed in March after a year-long investigation into alleged money...