Europe & Central Asia

After learning today that Ivo Pukanic, owner and editorial director, and Niko Franjic, marketing director, of the Zagreb-based political weekly Nacional, were killed when a bomb exploded under Pukanic’s car parked outside the paper’s building, we issued the following statement…

Alisher Saipov, a 26-year-old independent editor, was brutally silenced on October 24, 2007. An unidentified killer fired at him three times, using a Makarov pistol, in his hometown of Osh, Kyrgyzstan. 

Last weekend I participated in a conference in Venice, Italy, on climate change and the press. The meeting was hosted by former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev under the auspices on the World Political Forum, an organization Gorbachev founded in 2003 to foster discussion on “crucial problems that affect humankind.”

New York, October 14, 2008–The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned about the welfare of Russian lawyer Karinna Moskalenko, who represents the family of slain Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovskaya. Moskalenko was the target of an apparent poisoning in Strasbourg, France, days before she was due to appear in a Moscow court for pretrial…

New York, October 10, 2008–The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns today’s politicized imprisonment of independent journalist Salidzhon Abdurakhmanov and calls for his immediate and unconditional release.

New York, October 9, 2008–An Uzbek court should reject the politicized prosecution of independent journalist Salidzhon Abdurakhmanov and acquit him on fabricated drug possession charges, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Prosecutors are seeking a 17-year prison term for Abdurakhmanov, defense lawyer Rustam Tulyaganov told CPJ today. Nukus District Court Judge Kadyrbay Dzhamolov, who…

I met Anna Politkovskaya in person only once, in 2005. She was in New York to collect yet another journalism award, and stopped by CPJ one October afternoon. I remember her crossing the lobby with an even, determined step. She had an urgency about her–that rare focus that comes only with absolute clarity about one’s…

New York, October 6, 2008–Three men will soon go to trial in the October 2006 assassination of Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovskaya, according to local news reports. Russia’s Prosecutor-General’s Office approved the indictments on Wednesday, and sent the case to court on Thursday.

October 2008News from the Committee to Protect Journalists

A week after the Committee to Protect Journalists released its special report on the current state of press freedom in Azerbaijan, “Finding Elmar’s Killers,” Ali Hasanov, head of public affairs at the office of President Ilham Aliyev, told local journalists: “Azerbaijan has done enough work to attain political pluralism, freedom of expression and of the…