Posts Tagged ‘journalist’
May 8th, 2013
The president of Yemen says journalist Abdul-Elah Haidar Shaye should be released from jail. Will Barack Obama stand between the reporter and freedom? Iona Craig reports
Cartoonist Kamal Sharaf shows Shaye locked up while US Ambassador to Yemen Gerald Feierstein looks on holding the keys. The text says: Freedom for the Journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye
(more…)
January 7th, 2013
Bullets
were sent to a journalist and politician in
Northern Ireland this weekend, as
tensions continue to rise over a controversial decision last month to only fly the Union flag over Belfast City Hall on specific days rather than year round.
Local police
intercepted a letter with a bullet intended for a Belfast-based journalist who had reported on loyalist protests. A bullet and sympathy card addressed to Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) assembly member Patsy McGlone were also intercepted by Royal Mail over the weekend. Last month a pipe bomb was
planted outside of the home of a Northern Ireland press photographer.
June 22nd, 2012
An
Azerbaijani journalist was arrested yesterday on charges of illegal possession of drugs. Hilal Mamedov, a member of the
Talysh ethnic minority, is the editor-in-chief of Talysh language newspaper Tolishi Sado (Voice of Talysh). A Baku court
announced a three-month pretrial detention for the journalist, who was kidnapped and detained without explanation according to family members. The arrest
comes shortly after the journalist made a popular anti-Putin video.
April 6th, 2011
The chief crime reporter for the Urdu-language daily Extra New was
gunned down in Karachi on 2 April. Zaman Ali was the 14th Pakistani journalist to be killed in the last 13 months.
Witnesses claimed that he was murdered shortly after attending a gathering of Benazir Bhutto supporters, his assailants have not been caught. Pakistan’s Crime Reporters Association condemned his murder, calling for greater protection for working journalists.
February 14th, 2011
Journalist and blogger Olena Bilozerska has managed to
recover some of the equipment and material which was
illegally seized from her home in Kiev on 12 January. The police interrogation on 8 February included
questions about her sources. The police returned some items but have kept 162 CDs and DVDs which contain material needed for her work. She regained her camera and video camera, neither of which was working. The authorities also returned her computer, which had been dismantled.
November 10th, 2010
A Russian editor who was nearly killed in the attack two years ago, has been
convicted of slander.
Mikhail Beketov, who is confined to a wheelchair and can barely speak, has been found guilty of insulting the local mayor by the court in Khimki. He has been instructed to compensate damages by paying 500 roubles (100 British pounds).
Beketov had been covering the plans to build the road through Khimki’s protected forest. Although the motorway works have been stopped, another journalist and an ecologist have been assaulted this month.
Oleg Kashin, a correspondent of Russia’s well-known paper Kommersant, has been badly beaten with an iron bar on Saturday. Two days earlier, Khimki opposition activist Konstantin Fetisov had his skull broken after being released from police, where he was questioned about the protest.
Mikhail Mikhailin, editor-in-chief of
Kommersant said he is sure the attacks are connected to the articles written about the motorway. It has also been said that they carry the same signature.
Before
Beketov endured brain damage and lost his right leg and four fingers in the attack in November 2008, his car was set on fire and his dog was killed. Nobody has been brought to court.
October 11th, 2010
Turkish journalist
Ismail Saymez could be
jailed for 79 years if convicted of charges related to newspaper articles he has written. He has been charged with “violating the secrecy of an investigation” for his reporting on the
Ergenekon trials. He also faces charges of “insult” and “attempt to influence a fair trial.” According to The
International Press Institute National Committee, Saymez stated, “I only do my job as a reporter, inform the public on the events that the public is interested in, and supply them with objective information. I do not try to influence in any way. They sue me with imprisonment of tens of years on every word my newspaper reports.”
Among the
articles at issue are “What Prosecutor Cihaner was asked” of 18 February, “Assassination with a tick, coup of the tea vendors” of 12 February 2010, “Cihaner: I do not know Çiçek, I did not see him – Ciçek: I do not know anybody in Erzincan” of 20 February, “Did you meet Dursun Çiçek?” of 22 February, and ”Love games in Ergenekon – The Ergenekon prosecutor also took the judge’s statement” published 8 June. These articles were published in the newspaper
Radikal.
His first hearing is to take place on 28 January 2011.
September 17th, 2010
A radio news anchor and opposition political activist in Uganda’s central district Mukono was
beaten to death with metal bars on 13 September. Dickson Ssentongo routinely
read the 7 a.m. news bulletins for Prime Radio station in the Luganda language, but now becomes the second journalist to be killed in the country in three days. On Saturday, the journalist Paul Kiggundu was
beaten to death by taxi-drivers. Both Kiggindu and Ssetongo died in hospital some hours after being attacked. No arrests have been made in either case.
