2013

An identified State Security Service agent publicly flogged a reporter on July 3, 2013, while he was on an official visit to the Benue State Government House to deliver a press invitation to the state governor’s chief of staff, according to news reports.

Unidentified assailants attacked a television host in the city of Puerto Cortés on July 17, 2013, according to news reports.

Police in the economic capital of Abidjan summoned two journalists with the weekly L’Eléphant déchaîné on June 28, 2013, and interrogated them for more than six hours, Agence France-Presse reported, citing their lawyer.

Three Iraqi journalists were released on bail June 20, 2013, after being held for two weeks by the Ministry of Defense for purportedly stealing an official’s notebook.

Gabon’s state-run media regulatory agency, the National Communications Council, suspended three newspapers on May 29, 2013, according to news reports. 

At least four journalists were attacked in separate episodes on June 19, 2013, amid clashes in the Guinean capital, Conakry, between opposition militants and supporters of President Alpha Condé, according to CPJ interviews and news reports. The clashes erupted between opposition groups, mostly of Peul ethnicity, and the Guinean ruling party, mostly of Malinke ethnicity,…

Security forces in southwestern Niger detained for 48 hours a four-member crew of Al-Jazeera English TV while they were covering the conditions of refugees displaced by armed conflict in Nigeria, the Qatar-based station reported.

In two separate sessions on June 6, 2013, the Specialized Press and Publications Court found a Yemeni daily guilty of defamation charges in one case and innocent in another, according to news reports.

The Al-Dokki Criminal Court on May 28, 2013, sentenced Islam Afifi, former editor-in-chief of Al-Dustour newspaper, to a fine of 10,000 Egyptian pounds (US$1,431) after convicting him of libel against Essam al-Eryan, a leader in the Muslim Brotherhood. Al-Eryan filed a complaint against Afifi after the journalist published a report in June 2012 that alleged…

Alcides Peñaranda Oropeza, editor of the Peruvian daily and magazine Integración, was sentenced on May 21 in the city of Huaraz to a two-year suspended prison sentence and 10,000 soles (US$$3,662) in damages on charges of criminally defaming Cesar Álvarez Aguilar, governor of the northern Ancash region, according to news reports.