Middle East & North Africa

New York, March 1, 2010—In response to the brutal crackdown against journalists, writers, and bloggers in Iran, a coalition of leading press freedom and free expression groups have launched a petition drive calling for the release of those imprisoned. More such professionals are now in prison in Iran than in any other country in the world—at least 60, 47 of them journalists.

New York, February 26, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on the Palestinian Authority (PA) to heed a High Court order and release journalist Tariq Abu Zaid immediately.

New York, February 25, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on the Tunisian authorities to immediately release journalist Taoufik Ben Brik, who is serving a six-month jail sentence, so that he can receive the medical treatment he needs.

New York, February 18, 2009—The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned about the fate of Iraqi reporter Hussam Daoud al-Eqabi, who was seized by unidentified armed men on Wednesday. Al-Eqbi is a political reporter for Al-Ahed, a radio station in Kirkuk affiliated with radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr.

The two venues for the launch of Attacks on the Press in New York couldn’t have been more different. On Tuesday morning I was joined by Newsweek’s Maziar Bahari, and CPJ Asia Program Coordinator Bob Dietz in the hushed auditorium of the Dag Hammarskjöld Library at United Nations headquarters. The event was so well attended by the U.N. press corps that we ran out of copies of the book. The press conference went for more than an hour until I was slipped a note saying the U.N. spokesman needed the podium for the U.N. daily briefing.

New York, February 16, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the murder on Saturday of Muhammad al-Rabou'e, a Yemeni reporter for the monthly Al-Qahira who wrote several articles about the alleged activities of a reputed criminal group. Al-Jazeera and other news outlets said five individuals burst into Al-Rabou'e home in the district of Beni Qais, in Yemen’s northern province of Hajja, and shot him multiple times.

Newsweek journalist Maziar Bahari helped us launch Attacks on the Press at the United Nations in New York today. Bahari, an Iranian-Canadian citizen, was labeled an enemy of the Iranian regime and cruelly imprisoned for 118 days last year in Tehran. His very presence today, CPJ Deputy Director Robert Mahoney noted, was testament to the “tremendous efforts of press freedom groups around the world" that have advocated for the release of jailed journalists. But with at least 47 journalists in jail in Iran as of February 1, according to CPJ research, it’s still a “pretty grim picture,” Mahoney said. 

Naziha Rejiba, editor of the Tunisian online publication Kalima and a 2009 International Press Freedom Awardee, helped us launch the new edition of Attacks on the Press at a press conference today in Cairo.

By Fareed Zakaria

Toward the end of his 118-day ordeal inside Tehran’s Evin prison, Newsweek reporter Maziar Bahari had a bizarre exchange with his interrogator. Bahari had been held in solitary confinement since his arrest after Iran’s disputed presidential election in June; he had been subjected to near-daily beatings and interrogation sessions that stretched for hours. But his jailers had not been able to prove their accusation that Bahari was a spy for Western intelligence agencies. So they had an ominous-sounding new charge to levy against him: “media espionage.”