Middle East & North Africa

New York, November 20, 2017–Mauritanian authorities on November 16 approved an amendment to the country’s penal code that could allow courts to retroactively retry freelance blogger Mohamed Cheikh Ould Mohamed, who was convicted of blasphemy in 2014, and potentially re-sentence him to death, the state-owned news agency AMI and Agence France-Pressereported. The Committee to Protect…

Beirut, November 9, 2017–The Committee to Protect Journalists today called on Iraqi authorities to release freelance journalist and political commentator Samir Obeid immediately.

CPJ, along with over 30 Iranian and international human rights organizations, has called on the U.N. General Assembly to vote in favor of a proposed resolution on the promotion and protection of human rights in Iran next week.

CPJ’s 2017 Global Impunity Index spotlights countries where journalists are slain and the killers go free

New York, October 30, 2017– CPJ today condemned attacks against the Kurdish media in Iraq and called on all parties to refrain from targeting the press as political and military tensions escalate over a Kurdish independence bid. In recent days, attackers stabbed to death a journalist, a mob attacked two TV crews, and Iraq’s media…

Access to the Algerian news website Tout Sur l’Algérie (TSA) (All about Algeria) has been inaccessible on the country’s state-owned internet service provider since October 5, 2017, according to news reports and a statement by the website’s directors.

New York, October 23, 2017–Sudanese authorities should immediately release al-Tayar Editor-in-Chief Osman Mirgani from prison and drop all charges against him and al-Tayar columnist Mohamed Zine al-Abidine, the Committee to Protect journalists said today.

Beirut, October 19, 2017–The Committee to Protect Journalists today called on Israeli authorities to stop harassing Palestinian media and to release two staff members of a media company arrested during a series of raids in the West Bank yesterday.

The Mauritanian Radio and Television Broadcast Authority today ordered Mauritania’s five privately owned news stations to shut down for “failing to fulfil their financial agreements” with the country’s broadcast regulator, local media reported.

Beirut, October 16, 2017–Kurdish journalists Dilshan Ibash and Hawker Faisal Mohammed died from injuries sustained during October 12 suicide car bomb attacks that occurred in the eastern Syrian village of Abu Fas, where the two reporters were covering civilian displacement, according to their employer, Hawar News Agency, and the Syrian Journalists Association.