New York, April 8, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) sent a letter today to U.S. secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld expressing concern about U.S. military strikes against known media locations in Baghdad this morning that left three journalists dead and several wounded. CPJ called for an “immediate and thorough investigation into these incidents” and…
New York, April 8, 2003—Kenyan president Emilio Mwai Kibaki, who was elected in December 2002, has instructed his lawyers to file contempt-of-court charges against two private dailies. The charges stem from stories that appeared in the March 31 editions of the independent East African Standard and the Kenya Times about a court case filed against…
New York, April 7, 2003—Two journalists embedded with U.S. forces in Iraq were killed this afternoon, bringing to six the total number of journalists killed in action during the current war in Iraq. The Spanish daily El Mundo reported that its correspondent Julio Anguita Parrado died in an Iraqi missile attack while he accompanied the…
New York, April 6, 2003—CPJ is saddened by the death of Kamaran Abdurazaq Muhamed, a translator who was working for the BBC when he was killed today in northern Iraq in a “friendly fire” incident after a U.S. warplane dropped a bomb on a convoy of Kurdish soldiers who were traveling close to city of…
New York, April 4, 2003—Chile’s Sixth Chamber of the Santiago Appeals Court overturned the conviction of Chilean TV commentator Eduardo Yáñez, who was convicted of “disrespect” earlier this year. On Wednesday, April 2, the appeals court ruled that “even though the expressions voiced by Yáñez can be qualified as excessive, vulgar, or ignorant, they do…
New York, April 4, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns the trials of 28 independent Cuban journalists who have been detained since a crackdown began on March 18. The hearings began yesterday and continue today. “We are appalled and outraged by the arrests of our colleagues,” said CPJ acting director Joel Simon. ” Given…
New York, April 4, 2003—Michael Kelly, editor-at-large of the Atlantic Monthly and a columnist with the Washington Post, was killed today while traveling with the U.S. Army’s 3rd Infantry Division in Iraq, according to a statement from the Washington Post.
New York, April 3, 2003—During a NATO press conference today in Brussels, Belgium, Fabienne Nerac urged U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell to provide more information on her missing husband, ITV cameraman Fred Nerac. “I give you my personal promise we will do everything we can to find out what happened,” Powell told her, according…
New York, April 3, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is alarmed by state-owned Moroccan public television’s (TVM) decision to bar the satellite television station Al-Jazeera from using its facilities to feed broadcasts to the station’s headquarters in Doha, Qatar. Al-Jazeera’s correspondent in Morocco, Iqbal Ilhami, told CPJ that on March 30, she and her…
New York, April 2, 2003— Kaveh Golestan, an Iranian free-lance cameraman on assignment for the BBC, was killed today in northern Iraq after stepping on a land mine, the BBC confirmed. Golestan accidentally detonated the mine when he exited his car near the town of Kifri, John Morrissey of the BBC’s foreign desk told CPJ.…