New York, March 26, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is concerned about the safety of a group of at least three journalists in Baghdad who have reportedly been expelled from the country. Newsday reporter Matt McAllester and photographer Moises Saman were last heard from Monday evening. Molly Bingham, a freelance photographer, is also missing.…
New York, March 26, 2003—Sinisa Simic, the public prosecutor responsible for the stalled investigation into the April 1999 assassination of Dnevni Telegraf editor-in-chief Slavko Curuvija, has been temporarily suspended of his duties, according to local press reports. Serbia’s acting president Natasa Micic ordered the suspension on Friday, March 21, amid a government crackdown on judges…
New York, March 25, 2003— As part of a continuing crackdown on the independent press and political dissent in Cuba that begun on March 18, Cuban police detained prominent journalist and poet Raúl Rivero last Thursday, March 20, bringing the total number of journalists arrested to 20. As head of the Cuba Press news agency,…
New York, March 25, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is disappointed by the indictment issued in Haiti on Friday, March 21, which failed to charge the masterminds behind the murder of prominent Haitian journalist Jean Leópold Dominique. The long-awaited indictment charged six men, who have already been imprisoned for more than two years, with…
New York, March 25, 2003—The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) has revoked the credentials of two reporters from the Qatar-based news channel Al-Jazeera. According to NYSE spokesman Ray Pellecchia, the press accreditation of Al-Jazeera’s Ammar Shankari and his colleague Ramzi Shiber was canceled on Monday, March 24. Pellecchia said the decision was an effort to…
New York, March 24, 2003—A Zhlobin district court in eastern Belarus granted parole on Friday, March 21, to Paval Mazheika, a journalist with the independent newspaper Pahonya. The journalist was released immediately and traveled to his home in Hrodna, in the western part of the country. Mazheika, who had served half of his one-year prison…
New York, March 24, 2003— Iraqi officials expelled a Croatian free-lance journalist from Baghdad yesterday after he conducted a live interview with CNN, which was banished from Iraq last week. Robert Valdec, who had been in Baghdad for three weeks reporting for the Croatian Commercial Network, the Serbian Independent Network, the Bosnian Independent Network, and…
New York, March 23, 2003— Veteran ITV News correspondent Terry Lloyd, who disappeared in southern Iraq yesterday, is dead, according to the British television network ITN, which produces ITV News. “There is now sufficient evidence to believe that ITV News Correspondent Terry Lloyd, 50, was killed in an incident on the Southern Iraq war front…
New York, March 22, 2003— An Australian journalist was killed, and several British journalists disappeared today while covering escalating hostilities in Iraq. Free-lance Australian cameraman Paul Moran, who was on assignment for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), was killed today in an apparent suicide bombing when a man detonated a car at a checkpoint in…
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is concerned about your government’s enforcement of media restrictions under a state of emergency that has been in effect since the March 12 assassination of Serbian prime minister Zoran Djindjic. Natasa Micic, president of the Serbian National Assembly and currently acting president of Serbia, declared a state…