Middle East & North Africa

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is writing to protest the recent suspension of the weekly newspaper Al-Shumou. CPJ has learned that the Ministry of Information issued an order for the indefinite closure of the newspaper on February 3. Seif al-Hadheri, Al-Shumou’s editor-in-chief, told CPJ that the ministry provided no explanation for its action and that officials have refused to discuss the matter with him. He surmised that the closure came in response to Al-Shumou’s various “criticisms of government ministers.”

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is writing to protest the recent suspension of the weekly newspaper Al-Shumou. CPJ has learned that the Ministry of Information issued an order for the indefinite closure of the newspaper on February 3. Seif al-Hadheri, Al-Shumou’s editor-in-chief, told CPJ that the ministry provided no explanation for its action and that officials have refused to discuss the matter with him. He surmised that the closure came in response to Al-Shumou’s various “criticisms of government ministers.”

New York, February 19, 2002—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) deplores the suspended prison sentences and fines imposed last week on two journalists from the weekly Le Journal Hebdomadaire. On February 14, a Casablanca court of appeals convicted Abou Bakr Jamai, publications director of Le Journal Hebdomadaire, and Ali Ammar, the newspaper’s general director, of…

New York, May 8, 2002—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns the Monday, May 6, confiscation of the intellectual and political magazine Wijhat Nadhar. Wijhat Nadhar editor El-Mostafa Soulaih told CPJ that staff contacted him from Al-Najah al-Jadidah printing press in Casablanca and told him that agents from the secret service, the Direction de la…

According to a joint statement issued by the bureau chiefs of 29 international media organizations on January 15, the GPO has failed to renew press accreditations for all but a few of the Palestinian journalists employed by these organizations since December 31, when the old accreditations expired. The media companies have said that some foreign journalists, mostly camera crews, have also been refused accreditation.

January 19, 2002, New York—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns in the strongest terms Israel’s destruction today of the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation building in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Early this morning, Israeli forces entered the five-story building, which houses administrative offices and broadcasting facilities for the Palestinian National Authority’s Voice of Palestine…

Your Majesty: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is writing to protest the recent arrest of Fahd al-Rimawi, editor of the weekly newspaper Al-Majd. On January 13, according to press reports and CPJ sources, a State Security Court prosecutor in Amman summoned al-Rimawi and accused him of publishing “false information,” an offense under Jordan’s Penal Code. He was subsequently ordered detained for 15 days for questioning.

Read first-hand accounts by journalists covering the war in Afghanistan. • December 21, 2001—The New York Times reported that on December 20, Afghan tribal fighters detained three photojournalists working for U.S. news organizations. The journalists were detained for more than one hour, apparently at the behest of U.S. Special Operations forces in the Tora Bora area….

FPA STATEMENT The IDF has completed what it describes as “an accounting” of the outstanding cases in which journalists were shot in the territories. We are pleased that the IDF has reaffirmed its commitment to the freedom of the press, the safety of journalists and their freedom of movement.