New York, February 22, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes the release from house arrest of Internet journalist Ahmed Didi, who was pardoned today, four years after receiving a life sentence because of his work. Dissident Naushad Waheed was also pardoned. “The release of our colleague Ahmed Didi is welcome but long overdue,” CPJ Executive…
New York, February 22, 2006—Prosecutors in the eastern city of Focsani today indicted journalist Sebastian Oancea for possessing classified military documents about Western forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, the second such arrest in less than week, according to local and international press reports. Oancea, Focsani correspondent for the national daily Ziua, faces up to seven…
New York, February 21, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns Saturday’s deportation of writer, columnist and historian José Ignacio García Hamilton by Cuban authorities at Havana’s José Martí International Airport. Immigration authorities barred the Argentine writer from entering Cuba, saying that they were following government orders but could not provide further explanation, the Argentine press…
New York, February 21, 2006—Police in Kenya raided two tabloid newspapers on Monday, confiscating equipment and documents and arresting several journalists in the capital, Nairobi. Police also detained news vendors selling the so-called “alternative press” publications, which are known for provocative reporting on sex and political scandals. Local journalists told the Committee to Protect Journalists…
New York, February 21, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes the release of newspaper director Ibrahim Manzo, who spent 18 days in preventive detention awaiting the outcome of a defamation case. A court in Niamey, capital of Niger, handed Manzo a suspended one-month prison sentence on Monday and ordered his release, local journalists told CPJ.…
New York, February 21, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the expulsion of a Polish journalist after he legally entered Belarus to report on presidential elections next month. Border guards detained Gazeta Wyborcza correspondent Waclaw Radziwinowicz on Sunday at the train station in the Western city of Grodno as he was traveling to the capital…
New York, February 21, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by the closure of a second Russian newspaper that published religious cartoons related to the controversy over Danish drawings of the Prophet Muhammad. The weekly Nash Region in the city of Vologda ran a montage of the Danish cartoons on February 15, with some…
Paul Steiger St. Petersburg Times February 20, 2006 For 24 years, the Committee to Protect Journalists has remained steadfast in its mission to defend the press around the world. But in 2005, that mission meant paying unusual attention to what was happening at home. From Iraq to China, from Uzbekistan to Zimbabwe, 2005 was another…
New York, February 17, 2006— The Committee to Protect Journalists today called for investigations into two incidents in which journalists have been shot dead in Ecuador this week. In both cases it is unclear whether the journalists were killed for their work. On Monday, radio reporter José Luis Léon Desiderio was killed in the coastal…
New York, February 17, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned by the record damages awarded by a Moroccan court against the independent weekly Le Journal Hebdomadaire in a defamation suit brought by a Belgian think tank. The magazine, which has been harassed by the government since its founding in the late 1990s, said…