Middle East & North Africa

New York, March 5, 2009–The Committee to Protect Journalists calls for the immediate release of a Moroccan blogger who is being held on charges of defaming a prosecutor in the northern part of the country.

New York, March 5, 2009–The Committee to Protect Journalists has seen a groundswell of support for Roxana Saberi, an American journalist who is being held without charge at Tehran’s Evin prison, through its Facebook petition. Saberi, 31, was detained at the end of January and has not been heard from since February 10. She is…

CPJ will be collecting signatures until midnight tonight on a Facebook petition in support of Roxana Saberi, an American journalist who is being held without charge at Tehran’s Evin prison.

New York, March 3, 2009–The Committee to Protect Journalists called for the immediate release of a journalist who has been detained since late January by the Palestinian Authority (PA) after its release of another journalist in the West Bank on Monday.

New York, March 3, 2009–A spokesman for Iran’s judiciary said at a press conference today that freelance U.S. journalist Roxana Saberi is being held at Tehran’s Evin prison, where political prisoners are routinely detained, according to international news reports. Saberi is an American citizen as well as an Iranian national.

New York, March 2, 2009–The Committee to Protect Journalists called on the Iranian government today to explain why it has held American freelance journalist Roxana Saberi for over a month without revealing her location or charging her with a crime. 

We issued the following statement today after learning that Iranian authorities have been holding U.S. freelance journalist Roxana Saberi without charge since January…

New York, February 26, 2009–The Egyptian judiciary should overturn today’s court decision to impose a fine on five journalists for violating a ban on media coverage of a murder trial, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. The trial involves an influential businessman who is a member of President Hosni Mubarak’s ruling party.

Hussein al-Sawas, editor of Al-Baidha Press Web site and Al-Tajdeed newspaper, told CPJ that on January 23, 2009, he was kidnapped, hit, and detained for five days by bodyguards of the governor of al-Baidha, Muhammad Naser al-Amri.  

The Sudanese weekly Al-Maidan was not issued on February 10, 2009, because of official censorship, Abdul Qadir Muhammad, a reporter for the newspaper told CPJ in an e-mail. Muhammad wrote that the Sudanese security staff responsible for censorship omitted six articles and the banner headline on the front page and at least 10 articles in…