12 Oct 2011 | Index Index, minipost
A radio journalist has been killed in a suicide bomb attack in Somalia. Abdiaziz Ahmed Aden, a reporter and newscaster for Radio Markabley was caught in the attack on 4 October, in which 100 people were killed, and over 100 injured. Aden was dispatched to the capital Mogadishu from the radio station’s base in the Bardhere district, in southwest Somalia, on 30 September to cover ongoing operations against Al-Shabaab militants. In the attack which killed the journalist, a suicide bomber drove a bomb-loaded truck into government ministry security barrier. Aden was initially reported as missing, but was later identified by his family.
12 Oct 2011 | Index Index, minipost
An Angolan journalist is facing a year in prison for libel. William Tonet, editor of the newspaper Folha 8, was accused of libel after he published allegations of corruption among the country’s military elite. Tonet accused three generals of the Angolan Armed Forces of self-enrichment and power abuse in a 2008 news article. In a court ruling on Monday, the journalist was given five days to pay 10 million kwanzas (€77,000) in damages, or face a year in prison. The journalist’s lawyer, David Mendes, said the government of Angolan President, Jose dos Santos wants to imprison William Tonet.
12 Oct 2011 | Index Index, minipost
Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zanawi
publicly accused two imprisoned
Swedish journalists of being terrorists on Monday. In an interview with Norwegian newspaper
Aftenposten, Zenawi said Johan Persson and Martin Schibbye, of Sweden-based photo agency Kontinent, were accomplices to terrorists. “They are, at the very least, messenger boys of a terrorist organisation. They are not journalists,” the prime minister said. Persson and Schibbye
were arrested after they crossed with rebels of the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) into Ogaden. Zanawi added: “Why would a journalist be involved with a terrorist organisation and enter a country with that terrorist organisation, escorted by armed terrorists?”
12 Oct 2011 | Index Index, minipost
An appeals court in Armenia has upheld a libel ruling against a daily newspaper. The family of former President Robert Kocharian, took the newspaper Zhamanak to court in December, following its publication of a series of articles, linking Kocharian’s wife, Bella, with major trade in medicines and claiming that their older son, Sedrak, owns diamond mines in India, and had defrauded an Armenian businessman. The pro-opposition newspaper was ordered to pay 3m drams ($8,000) in damages.
