This week, four feminist bloggers were sentenced to imprisonment in Iran. In an exclusive preview of the new issue of Index on Censorhip (out next week), Iranian Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi discusses the prospects for free expression in her...
A Tehran court has passed six-month prison sentences on four female bloggers, found guilty under article 500 of the Islamic criminal code. The four women were charged for articles that appeared in two online newspapers that defend women’s rights in...
Hassan Al-Fahs, Tehran bureau chief of the Dubai-based satellite TV station Al-Arabiya, has been ordered to leave the country by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. There was widespread astonishment amongst the management of Al-Arabiya as...
Canadian activists are the subject of a lawsuit from one of the country’s largest media organisations, writes Mordecai Briemberg In early June 2007, to mark 40 years of continuous Israeli occupation of land conquered in 1967, some people in...
Amare Aregawi, editor for Ethiopian weekly the Reporter, was arrested on 22 August in connection with a libel case lodged by the Dashen brewery in Gondar. The lawsuit was filed following the publication of an article about two former brewery...
Index on Censorship award winner prevented from leaving country by security forces Journalist and free expression activist Sihem Bensedrine was forcibly prevented from leaving Tunisia by security forces at Tunis Airport on 19 August. The 2006 Index...
An Arab-Israeli publisher has been ordered to stop importing Arabic-language books from Syria and Lebanon. Salah Abassi gave an interview to Israeli public radio on 11 August in which he stated that the Trade and Industry Ministry had ‘warned’ him...
Dissident Syrian freed Syrian dissident Aref Dalila has been freed by Syrian authorities seven years into his ten-year jail term. The economist was jailed in 2002 on charges of inciting armed rebellion, spreading false information and trying to...
The Crown Prosecution Service stated there is 'insufficient evidence' to prosecute any US soldier over the death of ITN journalist Terry Lloyd in Iraq. On 22 March 2003 Terry Lloyd was injured in crossfire between Iraqi troops and American tanks...
A US military board last week ordered that Ahmed Raziak, a 38-year-old cameraman, be held for at least six more months for ‘imperative reasons of security’, but declined to disclose any specific allegations against him or provide any evidence as to...