7 Oct 2010 | Index Index, minipost
Detectives with the federal Investigative Committee say they are examining an expanded circle of suspects in the murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya.
The new suspects are said to be ethnic Chechens who wanted to get on the good side of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov. There is no evidence directly linking Kadyrov to the case. The original defendants are still considered as suspects.
Investigative Committee Chairman Alexander Bastrykin told CPJ on 28 September that his agency was mistaken in “rushing” a previous case to trial.
7 Oct 2010 | Index Index, minipost
The Sudanese Ministry of Information has refused to renew the license of Monte Carlo radio’s Arabic service, which broadcasts in Sudan from Paris. The radio station was told that certain laws and regulations prevent the license renewal from taking place. Similarly vague reasons were given to the BBC, when the British broadcaster’s Arabic radio service was banned from Sudan a few weeks ago. The government has insisted that neither decision was political, but the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) drew attention to the popularity of both stations, leaving no real cause for discontinuing broadcasts.
7 Oct 2010 | Index Index, minipost
The co-chair of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party has been convicted of ‘propaganda for an illegal organisation’ and handed a ten-month prison sentence.
Selahattin Demitras was punished for making a statement about the detention conditions of Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the militant Kurdistan Workers Party, imprisoned in 1999.
Demitras’s lawyer Meral Danis Bestas said that her client’s statement should be evaluated in the context of the right to freedom of expression.
7 Oct 2010 | Index Index, minipost
Paramilitary personnel ransacked the Balochistan offices of private television channel VSH News TV on 4 October. VSH staff were told by members of the Frontier Corps (FC) to put their hands up, and were then frisked and told to leave the office. Computers and other office equipment were searched and damaged. Reporter for VSH, Jabbar Baloch, was told by an FC spokesman that the raid was carried out due to a misunderstanding. Baloch believes the incident may be in connection to recently aired VSH footage which showed Balochistan journalists’ critical comments about FC activities.
