A team of lawyers called for the ban of Arabic classic A Thousand and One Nights on 17 April. The lawyers, from the "Actio popularis" group, filed a complaint with the prosecutor general, demanding that the book be confiscated and its publishers...
CATEGORY: Middle East and North Africa
From the archive: Revolution at the crossroads
Index on Censorship contributor
Fred Halliday has died at the age of 64. Here, we republish a typically insightful Halliday article on the Islamic Republic of Iran from 2001
Editor-in-chief abducted from Baghdad home
The editor-in-chief of the weekly newspaper al-Shahid, Saad al-Aossi, was abducted on 14 April. Armed men invaded his home, confiscated his computer and took him to an unknown location. There have been local reports that the men were from the...
Yemen: Media company raided for reporting police raid
The building of 14 October, a Yemeni national media company, was overrun by soldiers on 21 April in order to confiscate the latest issue of Al-Tariq, a daily newspaper it publishes. The reason for seizing the outlet was that the newspaper ran a...
Iran’s reformist movement hit again
Two political parties were suspended, a newspaper banned and three political figures sentenced to prison by the Iranian authorities on Monday. According to the official IRNA news agency, the Mujahedeen of the Islamic Revolution, the reformist group...
US approves anti-filtering software for Iran
The anti-internet filtering software, Haystack, received the necessary export license from the US government last week to sell their product to Iran in an effort to help Iranian citizens gain free speech. Inspired by the internet restrictions...
Bahrain bans sharing news on BlackBerrys
The Bahrain Ministry of Information and Culture announced a ban on sharing local news with BlackBerry mobile devices last week. A ministry official, Abdullah Yateem, said the ban was to prevent the “chaos and confusion caused by such news among the...
ElBaradei supporters deported from Kuwait
At least 21 Egyptian expatriates have been arrested and deported from Kuwait for supporting Mohamed ElBaradei. The former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency champions political reform in Egypt and is being tipped as a potential...
Iraq: Car-bomb targets journalist
The head of public relations at Iraq's Al-Rasheed satellite TV station was injured by a car-bomb on 13 April, which took both of his legs and seriously injured two others. Omar Ibrahim Al-Jabouri's car exploded in Doura, a suburb of Baghdad. No...
Tunisian journalists attacked and threatened
Two journalists in Tunisia have been targets of harassment and violence this month by unknown assailants. Mouldi Zouabi, a journalist for Radio Kalima, was anonymously attacked and had his wallet and press credentials stolen from him outside of a...