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.
11 Oct 2011 | Index Index, minipost
A reporter for an independent news service is awaiting deportation from Cuba‘s capital city. Calixto Ramón Martínez Arias of the Hablemos Press agency is awaiting expulsion from Havana for the ninth time in two years, following a recent crackdown on civic groups and dissident organisations. The journalist was arrested for the fourth time this year on 30 September, and will be deported to his home town of Camagüey. More than 2,500 arrests have been made during the political crackdown, and up to 563 people have been briefly detained or exiled.
