Middle East & North Africa

The Committee to Protect Journalists, along with 26 other press freedom and human rights organizations, sent a letter on November 12 to the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) seeking updates on the urgent appeal filed on November 14, 2023, concerning the imprisonment of Egyptian writer Alaa Abdelfattah. The appeal, submitted by Abdelfattah and…

On November 6, an Israeli strike killed at least 15 people in a house in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza. But communications difficulties meant that the Gaza health ministry struggled to determine the death toll. This is just one example among countless others where local reporters were able to help verify information about potential atrocities during…

Sulaymaniyah, November 8, 2024—The Committee to Protect Journalists calls for full accountability in the attack on journalist Wrya Abdulkhaliq, who received 21 stitches after two men stabbed his stomach and hit him in the head with the butt of a gun, in his home near Iraqi Kurdistan’s Sulaymaniyah city. “We are appalled by the brutal…

The Committee to Protect Journalists joined 14 human rights organizations in a November 1 letter urging U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy to suspend all economic and financial partnerships with Egypt until the country frees British writer Alaa Abd el-Fattah, who was due for release on September 29 after completing a five-year prison sentence. Egyptian authorities have refused…

The finding follows CPJ’s submission; expert body requests journalists’ immediate release due to arbitrary detention. New York, October 29, 2024—United Nations legal experts determined that Israel’s detention of three Palestinian journalists — Moath Amarneh, Mohammad Badr, and Ameer Abu Iram — is discriminatory, arbitrary, and in violation of international law. The expert opinion by the…

The recent escalation of Israel’s war in Lebanon has imperiled the press as they face Israeli strikes that have destroyed news outlet offices and killed at least three journalists, in addition to being assaulted, obstructed, threatened, and detained while reporting.   At about 3 a.m. on October 25, an Israeli airstrike hit a compound housing 18 journalists from multiple…

New York, October 25, 2024 – Tunisian authorities must immediately and unconditionally release political commentator Sonia Dahmani, who was sentenced on Thursday to two years in prison for spreading false news, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Friday. “Sonia Dahmani is already serving an eight-month prison term in Tunisia and sentencing her to two more…

Beirut, October 25, 2024—The Committee to Protect Journalists is appalled by Friday’s Israeli attack that killed two journalists and a media worker and injured at least three others, and calls for an independent investigation to determine whether the journalists’ compound was deliberately targeted. At about 3 a.m. on October 25, an airstrike hit a compound…

Washington, D.C., October 23, 2024 — The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Egyptian authorities to immediately release economic commentator and analyst Abdel Khaleq Farouk, who was arrested October 20 on charges of joining a terrorist organization and spreading false and inciting news for allegedly criticizing President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi’s economic policies in more than 40 articles.  “The arrest of…

New York, October 23, 2024—The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) must immediately return the home of journalist Ashraf Omer Ibrahim — a South Darfur Radio and Television correspondent and a local Al-Zarqa satellite channel presenter — after the paramilitary group seized it last week in Nyala, South Darfur, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Wednesday. “The…