Turkey releases VICE News journalist Mohammed Ismael Rasool on bail
New York, January 5, 2016–The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes the release on bail today of VICE News journalist Mohammed Ismael Rasool, and calls on authorities in Turkey to drop the terrorism charges he faces. Rasool, who was arrested in August, is banned from leaving Turkey and must report to a local police station twice…
Report highlights Turkey’s troubled press freedom record
Turkish authorities should end impunity for attacks against journalists, decriminalize insult and defamation, stop harassing critical news outlets, and release imprisoned journalists, according to “Press Freedom in Turkey’s Inter-Election Period,” a report published Saturday by the Vienna-based International Press Institute. Muzaffar Suleymanov, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program researcher, contributed to the report.
Joint mission finds Turkish journalists under severe pressure
Pressure on journalists in Turkey has severely escalated since parliamentary elections on June 7, restricting the media’s ability to report on matters of public interest, according to press freedom groups who conducted a joint international emergency mission to the country this week. Ahead of fresh elections on November 1, the group said that if the…
CPJ and VICE News call on Turkey to #FreeRasool
It has been more than seven weeks since Iraqi journalist Mohammed Ismael Rasool was arrested in Turkey alongside Jake Hanrahan and Philip Pendlebury, two British journalists from VICE News. But whereas Hanrahan and Pendlebury were released a week later, Rasool is still behind bars.
Privatizing censorship in fight against extremism is risk to press freedom
“We’re stepping up our efforts to discredit ISIL’s propaganda, especially online,” President Barack Obama told delegates at the Leaders’ Summit on Countering Violent Extremism last month. The social media counter-offensive comes amid U.N. reports of a 70 percent increase in what it terms “foreign terrorist fighters”–citizens of U.N. member states who have left to join…
Has White House finally got the message about strong encryption? Welcome shift seen in speeches and policy memo
Yesterday, during a panel on encryption policy hosted by Just Security, an online forum covering national security law and policy, top U.S. intelligence lawyer Robert S. Litt pressed the case for engineering backdoors in encryption without undermining computer security as a whole. As CPJ has documented, leading security and policy experts consider this impossible.
Don’t Forget Rasool: In international reporting, local journalists often suffer
When two journalists from VICE, Jake Hanrahan and Philip Pendlebury, were arrested with Iraqi journalist Mohammed Ismael Rasool on August 28, a familiar scenario unfolded. A week later, Hanrahan and Pendlebury were released following a media flurry and worldwide attention. Still behind bars is Rasool, an experienced journalist and translator who had worked extensively in…
Turkey frees 2 VICE News reporters but third remains in custody
New York, September 3, 2015–A Turkish court early today ordered the release of VICE News’ British journalists Jake Hanrahan and Philip Pendlebury, according to their outlet. A third journalist, Mohammed Ismael Rasool, an Iraqi who is based in Turkey, is still in custody and is being questioned by Turkish authorities, according to news reports. The…