Index on Censorship joins the call for an immediate, independent and transparent investigation into the brutal attack on investigative journalist and Index award winner Idrak Abbasov
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Four citizen journalists have been killed in Syria, despite the recent ceasefire. Ahmed Abdallah Fakhriyeh, Samir Shalab Al-Sham Abu Mohamed, Alaa Al-Din Hassan Al-Douri and Khaled Mahmoud Kabbisho were killed in the last week. Fakhriyeh was shot dead on his way to film the arrival of Syrian army in a the village of Dmeir on 14 April. On the same day Al-Sham, who worked for the Syrian News Network, died shortly after a mortar round hit the building he was filming in on Tuesday. On 17 April, activist Kabbisho was summarily executed after being questioned in the North West of the country. It is reported his head was crushed by a tank. Leading rights activist Al-Douri was hit by a bullet at a roadblock to the North-West of Hama. His body was handed over to his family on Tuesday (17 April), and is believed to show signs of torture.
The fraud squad questions the publishing director of an e-magazine over an opinion piece which criticised a Tunisian financial institution.
The police accused Hamza Lakhoua from the French-speaking Espace Manager of “publishing false information” and “damaging the reputation of a financial institution, and that of the country”.
Lakhoua refused to reveal to Index on Censorship the name of the financial institution he criticised “to avoid more problems”. He said: “In my opinion piece I criticised the institution’s management policies”.
Lakhoua explained: “They are accusing me of damaging the reputation of Tunisia, because this institution has major transactions with other international institutions such as the World Bank”.
He also told Index that while interrogating him, the fraud squad did not adhere to the press code, tell him “electronic journalism is still not considered as journalism in Tunisia”.
If convicted Lakhoua could face a fine and a jail term.
A radical Muslim group released a video threatening a number of German journalists last week. The Salafist group named journalists from newspapers Frankfurter Rundschau and Tagesspiegel in the video uploaded to YouTube on Thursday (12 April). The recording showed photographs of the journalists, detailed private information and threatened to reveal more if the media continued to publish “lies” about Frankfurt Salafist group DawaFFM. The group refers to itself as “The True Religion”, it has been widely criticised by press and politicians for its aim to have a copy of the Koran in “every household in Germany, Austria and Switzerland”,