Saudi Arabia / Middle East & North Africa

  
A poster of Saudi Arabia's King and Crown Prince, in Jeddah in November 2017. Medical assessments leaked to The Guardian reveal the abuse of detainees, including at least four journalists, in Saudi prisons. (Reuters/Reem Baeshen)

Infographic: Journalists named in Guardian report on torture in Saudi jails

Individuals detained under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s crackdown on dissent, including at least four journalists, are being abused and tortured in Saudi prisons, according to medical assessments prepared for King Salman and leaked to The Guardian.

Read More ›

Demonstrators urge Saudi authorities to release jailed women's rights blogger Eman Al Nafjan and activists Loujain al-Hathloul and Aziza al-Yousef outside the Saudi Arabian embassy in Paris on March 8, 2019. Today, Al Nafjan and two activists were released from prison. (Benoit Tessier/Reuters)

CPJ welcomes release of Saudi blogger after 10 months, calls for charges to be dropped

New York, March 28, 2019 — The Committee to Protect Journalists today welcomed the release of Saudiwoman’s Weblog founder Eman Al Nafjan, and called on Saudi authorities to immediately and unconditionally release all other journalists in custody.

Read More ›

A Saudi flag flies in front of the country's consulate in Istanbul, where columnist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered, in October 2018. In Saudi Arabia, two female journalists who criticized the kingdom's driving ban are on trial. (AFP/Yasin Akgul)

Saudi Arabia jails another journalist, tries women who criticized driving ban

New York, March 13, 2019–Saudi authorities must immediately release all journalists from jail and end its censorship of those critical of the kingdom, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

Read More ›

On International Women’s Day, CPJ highlights jailed female journalists

On International Women’s Day, CPJ has highlighted the cases of female journalists jailed around the world in retaliation for their work. At least 33 of the 251 journalists in jail at the time of CPJ’s prison census are women. At least one of those–Turkish reporter and artist Zehra Dogan–was released in February after serving a…

Read More ›

Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi speaks at an event hosted by Middle East Monitor in London on September 29, 2018. He was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, on October 2. (Middle East Monitor/Handout via Reuters)

More journalists killed on the job as reprisal murders nearly double

Journalists from Saudi Arabia to Afghanistan to the U.S. were targeted for murder in 2018 in reprisal for their work, bringing the total of journalists killed on duty to its highest in three years. The number of journalists killed in conflict fell to its lowest level since 2011. A CPJ special report by Elana Beiser

Read More ›

Reuters journalist Kyaw Soe Oo is led handcuffed from a court in Yangon in September. He and colleague Wa Lone are serving seven-year prison sentences in Myanmar. (Reuters/Ann Wang)

Hundreds of journalists jailed globally becomes the new normal

For the third year in a row, 251 or more journalists are jailed around the world, suggesting the authoritarian approach to critical news coverage is more than a temporary spike. China, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia imprisoned more journalists than last year, and Turkey remained the world’s worst jailer. A CPJ special report by Elana Beiser

Read More ›

CPJ calls on UN to investigate murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Saudi consulate

CPJ calls on U.N. Secretary General António Guterres to request that the United Nations launch an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.

Read More ›

A Saudi Arabia flag and a surveillance camera are seen in the backyard of the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul. Saudi actors are believed to have spied on phone calls and messages between murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi and his friend, Saudi dissident Omar Abdulaziz. (AFP/Ozan Kose)

How the Saudis may have spied on Jamal Khashoggi

Omar Abdulaziz, a 27-year-old Saudi Arabian dissident, can still remember the time Jamal Khashoggi, the storied Saudi journalist, unfollowed him on Twitter. It was in 2015, and Khashoggi had been tapped to head a new TV network called Al-Arab, a partnership between a member of the royal family and Bloomberg. Abdulaziz started haranguing Khashoggi online,…

Read More ›

A protester wears a mask depicting Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman with painted hands next to people holding posters of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi during the demonstration outside the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul on October 25, 2018. (AFP/Yasin Akgul)

Saudi control of Arab media, lamented by Khashoggi, shapes coverage of his death

It is a cruel irony that Jamal Khashoggi’s last unpublished column for The Washington Post was a call for press freedom in the Arab world. His homeland, Saudi Arabia, has spent the last three decades and hundreds of millions of dollars to ensure that never happens.

Read More ›

Senate Foreign Relations Committee must keep up pressure over Khashoggi

CPJ writes to the leaders of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, requesting that they ensure the Trump administration conducts a quick and thorough investigation into Jamal Khashoggi’s killing, as required by the Magnitsky Act, and that they consider holding independent hearings on Saudi Arabia.

Read More ›