New York, October 6, 2006-The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the murder of Jassem Hamad Ibrahim, a driver for the Iraqi state television channel Al-Iraqiya who was shot by unidentified gunmen in Mosul on Wednesday. The assailants ambushed Ibrahim at about 2 p.m. as he was running errands for the station, according to a source…
New York, October 6, 2006-The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes today’s conviction and sentencing of three people in the 2005 murder of investigative reporter Marlene Garcia-Esperat, but it calls on the government to aggressively pursue the prosecution of those who allegedly ordered the killing. CPJ also urged authorities to redouble their efforts in investigating the…
New York, October 5, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is outraged by the six-year prison sentence given today to independent reporter Ulugbek Khaidarov following a two-day trial in which the prosecution’s lead witness reportedly affirmed the journalist’s innocence. Khaidarov, whose reports in independent foreign publications were critical of government and business officials, was found guilty…
New York, October 4, 2006-The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns this week’s arrest of Rudy Apolo, a columnist and publisher of the Asian Star Journal and Asia Star Balita, and three members of his editorial staff on a criminal defamation charges related to reports on alleged government corruption. The four were arrested Monday morning in…
New York, October 4, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the three-year prison sentence given today to a critical journalist in Azerbaijan on what local press freedom activists called trumped up drug charges. Sakit Zakhidov, a prominent reporter and satirist for the daily opposition newspaper Azadlyg, was convicted of drug use by a court in…
New York, October 3, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned by death threats on Islamist Web sites against a controversial commentator for the French daily Le Figaro over an article critical of the Prophet Muhammad. Robert Redeker, a high school philosophy teacher in the southwestern city of Toulouse, has gone into hiding under…
New York, October 3, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists deplores local authorities’ ongoing harassment of the independent weekly Permsky Obozrevatel, one of the few sources of independent news in the western Russian city of Perm. “We are deeply concerned by the continuing harassment of Permsky Obozrevatel,” CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon said. Perm police detained…
New York, October 2, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by the ongoing campaign of intimidation by the authorities in Burundi against radio stations that have cast doubt on a government claim to have uncovered a coup plot. The State Prosecutor today questioned three journalists from three independent stations about their sources for a…
New York, October 2, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns a three-month ban by authorities in Gabon on the newspaper Les Echos du Nord for an article which criticized the handling of a territorial dispute with neighboring Equatorial Guinea. The National Council on Communications (CNC), an official regulatory body, imposed the ban on September 29,…
New York, October 2, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists today condemned a ban on the Far Eastern Economic Review, which has been hit with a criminal defamation lawsuit by the Singapore leadership for an article about an opposition politician. The Ministry of Information, Communications and Arts revoked the Review’s distribution rights in Singapore on September…