3 Aug 2011 | Index Index, minipost
TV reporter José Agustín Silvestre was kidnapped, shot and killed on 2nd August in La Romana, Dominican Republic. Local papers have claimed his murder is connected to accusations he had made regarding corruption and local delinquency on his programme, The Voice of Truth. Silvestre had also served a prison sentence in May for defamation and slander after accusing a city prosecutor of having drug trafficking connections. The Inter American Press Association called 2011 “the most tragic year in the last two decades for Latin American press” in a report published last month. Silvestre is the 20th reporter to have been killed in the region this year.
3 Aug 2011 | Index Index, minipost
Carlos Walker, news editor for the site 0223.com.ar, was beaten and shot in the leg on 29th July in Mar del Plata, eastern Argentina, while reportedly photographing posters that featured political propaganda. In another episode in the country, journalist Leo Graciarena and graphic reporter Francisco Guillén, of the newspaper La Capital, were attacked by armed individuals while investigating a poor settlement in the city of Rosario, the paper said.
2 Aug 2011 | Index Index, Middle East and North Africa, minipost
BBC journalist Shaimaa Khalil has been released after her arrest yesterday in Egypt. The BBC has said it is not yet clear whether she faces further action by the authorities. Reports say that Khalil, a producer at the broadcaster’s Cairo bureau, was believed to have been arrested along with over 80 people, including other journalists, after soldiers and riot police cleared a three-week sit-in in Tahrir Square. She was detained for 20 hours at a military base before being moved and later released.
1 Aug 2011 | Index Index, minipost
Authorities in Puntland, Somalia’s northeastern semi-autonomous region, released reporter Faysal Mohamed Hassan on Sunday. Mohamed, who wrote for the private news site Hiiraan Online, was serving a prison sentence over a story claiming that two murdered men belonged to Puntland’s security personnel. The journalist had begun serving his one-year sentence in the port city of Bossasso following his 2nd July conviction on charges of endangering state security and publishing a “false news report.”
