New York, January 8, 2008—Police in Dar-es-Salaam said Monday that they had two suspects in custody after armed men stormed the newsroom of a popular vernacular newspaper and seriously injured two top journalists, according to local reporters and news accounts. Managing Editor Saed Kubenea of the Kiswahili-language Mwana Halisi and veteran journalist Ndimara Tegambwage, a…
New York, January 7, 2008—Police arrested freelance journalist Idle Moallim on Sunday in the northeastern city of Bossasso in the semi-autonomous region of Puntland, local journalists told CPJ. Police arrested Moallim for “misreporting” a story on human trafficking in Bossasso and are holding him at Bossasso central prison, according to local journalists. Moallim is a…
New York, January 4, 2008—State regulators in the Guinean capital, Conakry, summarily suspended two private newspapers on Monday and barred their journalists from practice for three months. Local journalists and news reports say the bans were connected to December articles critical of top government officials.
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, January 2, 2008— Three Ethiopian journalists told CPJ the government denied them applications to launch new newspapers on Tuesday. All the journalists spent 17 months in prison following the country’s 2005 elections. The newspapers were slated to become the country’s first independent political publications since authorities banned eight local papers and forced at…
New York, December 28, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes today’s pardon of five journalists imprisoned in Azerbaijan, but it calls on President Ilham Aliyev to free the three journalists who remain unjustly jailed. Samir Sadagatoglu, Rafiq Tagi, Faramaz Novruzoglu, Rovshan Kebirli, and Yashar Agazadeh were among 114 prisoners pardoned by presidential decree. The five…
New York, December 27, 2007— A reporter who took photographs of French journalist Gwen LeGouil in custody with his kidnappers in Somalia’s semi-autonomous northeastern region of Puntland has been detained since Sunday without charge, local journalists told CPJ. Awale Jama Salad, a freelance journalist based in the port city of Bossasso, exclusively met with LeGouil and…
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 26, 2007— The Committee to Protect Journalists extends its condolences to the colleagues and family of Abdulkadir Ali Hosh, an online journalist based in Somalia’s semi-autonomous northeastern region of Puntland, who died in the line of duty in a car accident on Monday evening. Hosh, 40, editor of the Somali news Web site…
New York, December 26, 2007 — The Philippine government today announced that it has identified a witness in the slaying of radio broadcaster Ferdinand Lintuan on Monday. The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to ensure that the case is aggressively pursued in order to bring Lintuan’s attackers to justice.