2009

On April 15, 2009, a documentary filmmaker was handcuffed and forcibly removed from the University of Southern California campus during a journalism awards ceremony. The filmmaker, John Ziegler, was led away by two USC Department of Public Safety officers after refusing university requests to remain within a designated area behind a barricade set up for…

Two photographers reported being shot at by bodyguards outside the home of Brazilian supermodel Giselle Bündchen in the western Costa Rican city of Santa Teresa de Cóbano on the afternoon of April 4, 2009, according to local and international news reports. No one was injured. 

On April 2, 2009, a professional mixed-martial arts fighter and boxer was charged with assaulting a food critic for the Times Union newspaper in Albany, New York. Police are investigating whether the assault was a premeditated attack in retaliation for a critical review of an area restaurant the year before. 

Early in the morning of March 30, 2009, the decaying, mangled corpses of a slew of dead animals were left by the front door of a college editor’s off-campus residence in Hillsdale, Michigan. The carcasses included one and a half deer, several large rodents, and a black goat, according to The Collegian, the newspaper of…

On March 31, 2009, in the commercial city of Abidjan, Judge Aissata Koné convicted Op-Ed Editor Nanankoua Gnamenteh  and Managing Editor Eddy Péhé of  private weekly Le Repère  of charges of  “offending the head of state” over an article in early March that was critical of President Laurent Gbagbo, according to local media reports.

Zuhair Latif, a Tunisian journalist with the Arabic Web site of news channel France 24, was detained for two days before being expelled from Sudan on March 1, 2009, the channel reported the following day.

On February13, 2009, Venezuelan authorities arrested Rafael Segundo Pérez, a former sergeant for the Carabobo police, in connection to the January 16 killing of journalist Orel Sambrano, according to local news reports. Pérez is accused of working as a hired assassin and conspiring to commit a crime.

On March 13, 2009, Ecuadoran journalist Emilio Palacio told local reporters that he had received threats against himself and his family following a March 1 article criticizing President Rafael Correa’s weekly radio address. 

In a ruling issued on January 9, 2009, the state-run media regulator, the High Communication Council, suspended from circulation the private daily Le Citoyen for one month for allegedly violating journalism ethics, according to news reports and local journalists.  

Hussein al-Sawas, editor of Al-Baidha Press Web site and Al-Tajdeed newspaper, told CPJ that on January 23, 2009, he was kidnapped, hit, and detained for five days by bodyguards of the governor of al-Baidha, Muhammad Naser al-Amri.