2012

Unidentified armed men wearing masks abducted Abdrahmane Keïta, editor of the private bi-weekly L’Aurore, in a public square in Bamako, the capital, at about 8:30 p.m. on July 2, 2012, according to local journalists and news reports. The gunmen dragged Keïta onto their vehicle while repeatedly kicking and beating him with truncheons, the reports said.

Journalist Abdulhamid Adiamoh was convicted on a contempt-of-court charge on June 28, 2012, and was ordered to pay a fine of 100,000 dalasi (US$3,100) or serve six months in jail with hard labor.

Habi Baby, an editor of the weekly Caravane, was arrested by soldiers at his home in Bamako, the capital, on June 12, 2012, after he published a story critical of Mali’s security forces, according to local journalists and news reports.

Police in Lagos, the commercial capital, assaulted at least 10 journalists and confiscated their equipment on April 4, 2012, according to news reports. The journalists were covering a coroner’s inquest into a 2010 traffic accident, the reports said.

Chinese activists Lü Jiaping, his wife Yu Junyi, and an associate, Jin Andi, were imprisoned in 2010 without their families being informed. The full details of their 2011 trial and sentences were not made public until 2012, according to the English-language Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post.

Throughout December 2011, HAAC, Benin’s state-run media regulatory agency, summoned more than a dozen newspapers to public hearings and handed them sanctions ranging from a public apology to indefinite suspension, according to news reports. HAAC’s president is appointed by Benin’s head of state, and two-thirds of the agency’s members are appointed by the government, CPJ…

Police officers assaulted Alpha Oumar Diallo, a journalist for online newspaper Aminata, as he covered anti-government protests on May 10, 2012, in Conakry, the capital, according to news reports and local journalists.

On April 16, 2012, the Zimbabwe Republic Police in the southern border town of Beitbridge arrested Robin Hammond, a freelance photojournalist with dual U.K. and New Zealand citizenship, as he reported on migration between Zimbabwe and neighboring South Africa, government-controlled state daily The Herald reported.

On May 12, 2012, intelligence agents in the capital Bamako summoned editor Biram Fall of the private biweekly Le Prétoire for interrogation, according to local news reports and Agence France-Presse.

After the publication of CPJ’s March 27, 2012, news alert on the deaths of Naseem Intriri and Walid Bledi during a Syrian military attack near the Turkish border, a human rights defender and diplomatic sources raised questions about the journalistic credentials of the deceased.