Legal Action

Kazakh authorities have banned the distribution of the independent weekly Respublika-Delovoye Obozreniye, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said Tuesday. On March 1, the Medeu District Court in Almaty denied the weekly’s appeal and left in place a ban on the paper’s distribution that had been imposed in mid-February. The ban will remain in place until the newspaper pays 60 million Kazakh...

A Kuwaiti court has fined a journalist and two newspapers for statements deemed offensive to the ruling family and the prime minister, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). On Sunday, a criminal court in Kuwait fined opposition writer and journalist Mohammed Abdulqader al-Jassem 3,000 Kuwaiti dinars (US$10,500) for publishing an article in November critical of Prime Minister...

Umuseso, one of Rwanda’s leading independent weeklies, could be closed down as a result of case brought by the public prosecutor’s office accusing it of libel and invasion of privacy for reporting that a government minister was having an extra-marital affair with the mayor of Kigali, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). A neighbourhood court in Nyarugenge is due to issue its verdict on...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on judges in Tajikistan’s capital, Dushanbe, to drop their defamation lawsuits against three popular independent weeklies for damage amounts that would bankrupt them. Claiming that Ozodagon, Farazh, and Asia-Plus published biased and defamatory articles about them in late January, judges Nur Nurov and Ulughbek Mamadshoyev of Tajikistan’s...

An opinion column in Uganda’s leading independent newspaper suggesting parallels between President Yoweri Museveni and former Philippine leader Ferdinand Marcos led to criminal libel charges against two journalists Wednesday, the Committee to Protect Journalists has said quoting local media reports. A magistrate in the capital, Kampala, charged Angelo Izama, a senior reporter, and Henry Ochieng...

Former Prime Minister Janez Jansa and the Slovenian state have brought defamation charges against Finnish journalist Magnus Berglund in connection the bribery allegations he made during a programme broadcast on Finnish TV station YLE on September 1, 2008. Berglund accused Jansa, other senior officials and high ranking military officers of collecting around 20 million euros in illegal commissions...

A Moscow court has ruled against freelance journalist and former Soviet dissident Alexandre Podrabinek in a lawsuit by Second World War veteran Viktor Semenov, who claimed he was offended by an online article last September criticising government attempts to paint a rosy picture of the Soviet era. In its ruling, issued on January 27, the court ordered Podrabinek to pay Semenov 1,000 roubles (23...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on the Uzbek authorities to immediately drop all charges against Umida Akhmedova, a prominent photojournalist and documentary filmmaker who covers gender, ethnic, and cultural issues, and allow her to continue to do her work without fear of reprisal. On January 13, investigators with the city police department in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent...

A new criminal charge has been filed against imprisoned Azerbaijani editor Eynulla Fatullayev, a 2009 recipient of CPJ’s International Press Freedom Award. Based on Fatullayev’s account and the government’s long record of persecuting the editor, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) believes the charge to be fabricated. On Tuesday, guards at Prison Colony No 12 in Baku claimed...

A court in the Amazonian state of Acre released Antônio Muniz, a local TV commentator and columnist for the daily newspaper O Rio Branco, on December 4, two days after he was jailed in connection with a 2002 conviction on a charge of defaming a senator. “The court’s decision was necessary because press offences have been decriminalised,” Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) said. “We are...