UPDATE January 26, 2007 Original Alert: April 25, 2006 Abraham Reta Alemu, freelance IMPRISONED Alemu, previously free on bail after already serving more than three months of a one-year prison sentence handed down in April 2006, was ordered back to jail after Ethiopia’s Supreme Court rejected his appeal, according to CPJ sources. He was transferred…
AUGUST 27, 2007 Posted September 7, 2007 L’IntelligentHARASSED About 40 militants of pro-government student group FESCI invaded the offices of private daily L’Intelligent in the capital, Abdijan, sequestering journalists for two hours, seizing newsroom equipment and knocking down the door of editor Laurent Okoué, according to news reports and local journalists.
New York, January 23, 2007—A court in the capital, Ouagadougou, convicted two top journalists with the private bi-monthly L’Evénement on criminal defamation charges on Monday in connection with critical stories about the unsolved 1998 murder of editor Norbert Zongo. Director Germain Nama and editor Ahmed Newton Barry were found guilty of defaming Francois Compaoré, brother…
Your Excellency: We are writing to urge that you use all of your influence to ensure a transparent and thorough investigation into the recent murder of veteran award-winning journalist Godwin Agbroko in Lagos. The murder, which federal police officials have characterized as an assassination, casts a deep chill on journalists reporting the news in Nigeria in the run-up to April’s historic presidential election.
New York, January 19, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on authorities in Burkina Faso to drop criminal defamation charges against two private newspaper journalists over stories on the unsolved 1998 murder of editor Norbert Zongo. The articles discussed a report by the Paris-based press freedom group Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) that raised questions about…
New York, January 18, 2007–The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the ruling by a court in the northern breakaway republic of Somaliland on Wednesday to try three jailed journalists under archaic criminal laws in connection with a story critical of the president. A regional court in the capital, Hargeysa, ruled that editor Ali Abdi Dini,…
New York, January 16, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the jailing since Friday of the director of a private Kinyarwanda-language newspaper in the capital, Kigali, for publishing a letter critical of the government. Agnès Nkusi-Uwimana of the bi-monthly Umurabyo was still being detained today at the Muhima police station on charges of discrimination and…
New York, January 16, 2007—Four private broadcasters returned to the air today, a day after being shut down by Somalia’s U.N.-backed transitional government, according to local journalists and the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ). HornAfrik radio and television, Radio Shabelle, Radio IQK (Holy Quran Radio), and Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television resumed broadcasting after a closed-door…
New York, January 12, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns a government decision on Tuesday to suspend a private radio station for 15 days and ban a foreign journalist from the domestic airwaves indefinitely in response to critical coverage of the Togolese soccer association (FTF). Radio Victoire in the capital, Lomé, remained off the air…