2016

Three operatives of the State Security Service, Nigeria’s secret police, on September 6 arrested Emenike Iroegbu, who runs the news website Abia Facts, from his home in Uyo, the capital of the southern state of Akwa Ibom, on suspicion of libelling the governor of neighboring Abia state, according to news reports. The operatives searched Iroegbu’s…

Burundian authorities detained Gisa Steve Irakoze, a reporter for the independent Radio Buja FM on August 18, 2016, and released him without charge a week later, rights groups and the National Union of Journalists in Burundi reported.

Gunmen shot at a car carrying three Mozambican reporters on assignment in Mozambique’s western Manica province on August 12, 2016. One journalist was injured by shards of glass, according to a report from the country’s official news agency.

Ethiopian police on August 8, 2016, detained three journalists reporting on the effects of a severe drought in the country before escorting them back to Addis Ababa with a warning not to work outside the capital, the Foreign Correspondents’ Association of Ethiopia said in a statement.

Sahr Amadu Komba, manager of the local radio station Eastern Radio 96.5 FM in the diamond mining town of Koidu, in Sierra Leone’s eastern Kono District, went into hiding from July 27-31, 2016, out of fear of arrest on allegations of inciting the public to protest the government’s response to floods that destroyed homes and…

A bus transporting journalists and volunteers between Olympic venues in Rio de Janeiro was hit by a projectile on August 9, 2016. Two of the bus windows were smashed, and at least two people on board were injured by flying glass, organizers said in a statement.

Omani authorities arrested a third journalist from the independent newspaper Azamn on August 9, 2016, and ordered the paper to cease publishing, according to human rights groups and local news reports.

An unidentified group of armed men abducted Aboubaker Al-Bizanti, a producer for Art Media Solutions (AMS), which produces local news coverage for the broadcaster Libya Al-Ahrar TV and other television stations, the night of August 7, 2016, and released him the following day, according to the journalist, his colleagues, and Libyan news websites.

A Cairo criminal court on July 18, 2016, sentenced Egyptian freelance photojournalist Belal Darder Mohamed to 15 years in prison in absentia on charges of participating in an unlicensed protest and membership in a terrorist organization, according to press reports. The charges were in connection with his work documenting a December 2014 protest by students…