New York, August 13, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is troubled by a news release summarizing the results of a U.S. Central Command (Centcom) investigation into the April 8 shelling of the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad. The release, which was published yesterday on Centcom’s Web site, failed to answer vital questions about the incident,…
New York, August 12, 2003—The Moscow City Court upheld an earlier July 24 district court ruling today denying a foreign passport to Russian journalist Grigory Pasko. Ivan Pavlov, Pasko’s attorney, told CPJ in a telephone interview today that Pasko plans to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France. Pasko was convicted…
New York, August 11, 2003—CPJ is alarmed by the deteriorating health of imprisoned journalist Oscar Espinosa Chepe, who was transferred last week to a military hospital in the capital, Havana. On Thursday, August 7, Espinosa Chepe became ill and was taken from a hospital in the eastern province of Santiago de Cuba to the Finlay…
Nova York, 11 de agosto de 2003 — O Comitê para a Proteção dos Jornalistas (CPJ) se encontra alarmado pela deterioração do estado de saúde do jornalista encarcerado Oscar Espinosa Chepe, que na semana passada foi trasladado para um hospital militar da capital, Havana. Na quinta-feira, 7 de agosto, Espinosa Chepe passou muito mal e…
New York, August 11, 2003—A cameraman for the Qatar-based satellite channel Al-Jazeera and his assistant were injured yesterday, Sunday, August 10, during a grenade attack on U.S. troops in Baghdad. Cameraman Hussein Ali Hassan and his assistant Mustafa Hazem suffered shrapnel wounds to their legs after an assailant or assailants dropped a grenade from a…
New York, August 6, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply troubled that Sudanese free-lance journalist Youssef al-Bashir Moussa, a contributor to the private daily Al-Sahafa, has been jailed for more than a week. Editors at Al-Sahafa told CPJ that the paper ran a story by Moussa on July 28 reporting that several students…
New York, August 5, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns yesterday’s decision by a Rabat court sentencing three journalists to prison for violating Morocco’s new anti-terrorism law. Editors Mohammed al-Herd and Abdel Majid Ben Taher, of the weekly newspaper Al-Sharq, and Mustapha Qashnini, editor of the weekly Al-Hayat al-Maghribiya, were found guilty of “extolling…
New York, August 5, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns the Syrian government’s closure of the privately owned satirical weekly Al-Domari. Anwar al-Bunni, a lawyer representing the paper, told CPJ that the government canceled the newspaper’s license on July 31. On Sunday, August 3, the state-owned daily Tishrin reported that the Ministry of Information…
New York, August 4, 2003—American free-lance journalist William Nessen was released on Sunday, August 3, after being convicted the previous day on immigration charges. The Banda Aceh District Court sentenced Nessen to 40 days in jail, time he had already served. Chief Justice Syafruddin Nasution convicted Nessen of reporting without informing local authorities in war-torn…
New York, July 30, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns the Saudi Arabian Information Ministry’s decision to ban Saudi writer Hussein Shobokshi from writing his weekly newspaper column. According to a July 29 Reuters report, Shobokshi received a call from his editors at Okaz, the Saudi daily that published his weekly columns. “I got…