Washington, January 22, 2008—In testimony today before the House Middle East and South Asia Subcommittee, the Committee to Protect Journalists raised concern about mounting press freedom abuses in U.S. ally nations in the Middle East and urged the U.S. government to prioritize press freedoms in its bilateral relations.
JANUARY 20, 2008 Posted February 15, 2008 Aziz al-Matni, Al-Anbaa ATTACKED Al-Matni, director-in-charge of the weekly newspaper Al-Anbaa, told CPJ he was surprised by a wildfire threatening his home in Matn district’s Qornet Shehwan, approximately 10 miles from the capital, Beirut, around 12:30 a.m. His car, a blue Mitsubishi Lancer, had been set on fire.…
New York, January 18, 2008—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns a Tunisian appeals court’s ruling on Friday that upholds a one-year prison sentence against a journalist who had written articles critical of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and the first family. A court of appeal in Sfax, Tunisia’s second-largest city, confirmed a lower court’s…
Dear President Bush: The Committee to Protect Journalists is writing to you in advance of your expected meetings next week with Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. We would like to draw your attention to the ongoing imprisonment of two journalist bloggers as well as to other restrictions on the press in each country.
New York, January 2, 2008—The Committee to Protect Journalists today condemned the Tunisian government’s denial of a passport to Kamel Labidi, a freelance Tunisian journalist and CPJ’s Middle East representative. On July 17, Labidi, a Tunisian national, applied for a new passport at the Tunisian Embassy in Washington after losing his old one. A representative…
New York, December 26, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by the ongoing detention of a leading pro-reform Saudi blogger who has been held without charge since early this month. On December 10, Fouad Ahmed al-Farhan, a 32-year-old blogger who runs the site Alfarhan, was detained by Saudi security agents at the Jeddah office…
New York, December 18, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by the murder over the weekend of an Iraqi journalist who reported for an online news site. In the early morning of December 15, Ali Shafeya al-Moussawi, a correspondent for the video-based news Web site Alive in Baghdad, was found shot to death in…