New York, June 3, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns the recent imprisonment of Mostafa Bakry and his brother Mahmoud Bakry, editor-in-chief and deputy editor-in-chief, respectively, of the weekly newspaper Al-Osboa. On Sunday, June 1, Cairo’s Court of Cassation, Egypt’s highest legal authority, rejected the appeals of the journalists, who had been sentenced to…
New York, June 2, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is concerned about the health of Ali Lmrabet, director of two Casablanca-based weeklies, the Arabic-language Douman and its French sister publication, Demain. Lmrabet, who was sentenced to four years in prison on May 21 for “insulting the king” and “challenging the territorial integrity of the…
Your Royal Highness: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is concerned by the dismissal this week of Jamal Khashoggi from his job as editor of the Saudi daily Al-Watan. On May 27, the government removed Khashoggi from his post without explanation, according to international media reports. His dismissal came in response to Al-Watan’s provocative editorial…
New York, May 27, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) welcomes the recent release of Ibrahim Hemaidi, the Damascus bureau chief of the pan-Arab, London-based daily Al-Hayat. Hemaidi, who was released on Sunday, May 25, had been detained since December 23, 2002, when he was arrested for writing an article discussing the Syrian government’s alleged…
New York, May 27, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released an investigative report today about the April 8 shelling of the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad by U.S. forces, which killed two journalists and wounded three others. CPJ’s investigation, titled “Permission to Fire,” provides new details suggesting that the attack on the journalists, while not…
New York, May 22, 2003—Two Palestinian journalists were recently brutally assaulted by Israeli soldiers after leaving a party in the West Bank city of Bethlehem. In the early morning hours of Tuesday, May 20, Shaaban Qandil, a cameraman with the Arabic News Network, and Joseph Handal, a cameraman with France 2, had just left Handal’s…
New York, May 15, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is alarmed by recent measures taken against the press in Sudan, including the arrest of one journalist and the closure of a newspaper. Noureddin Madani, editor of the daily Al-Sahafa, told CPJ that Yousef al-Bashir Moussa, the newspaper’s correspondent in the city of Nyala, (about…