28 Feb 2012 | Middle East and North Africa, minipost, News and features
UPDATE 15:37 28/02/11: France’s President Sarkozy has said that Le Figaro correspondent Edith Bouvier has escaped Homs and is in Lebanon. This has not been fully confirmed.
The Sunday Times has confirmed that British photographer Paul Conroy has escaped from the besieged city of Homs in Syria. Conroy, who was injured in the attack that killed war Sunday Times war correspondent Marie Colvin and French journalist Remi Ochlik was smuggled out of the city by anti-government accidents and is now in Lebanon. There have been reports that several activists were killed by government forces during the escape. Several media workers remain trapped in Homs. The Syrian army’s elite 4th armoured division is reported to have been deployed to Homs, prompting fears of a further escalation of the government assault on the city.
23 Feb 2012 | Syria
The undersigned organisations call on the Syrian authorities to immediately release Mazen Darwish, a prominent Syrian human rights defender and Director of the Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM) – as well as seven of his colleagues and a visitor, who were arrested during a raid on their Damascus offices (more…)
22 Feb 2012 | Index Index, Middle East and North Africa, minipost
Marie Colvin, veteran war reporter for the Sunday Times, was killed this morning with French photojournalist Remi Ochlik when a shell hit a makeshift media centre in the besieged Syrian city of Homs. Two other journalists are reportedly wounded, named as British freelance photographer Paul Conroy, who was working with Colvin, and Edith Bouvier of French newspaper Le Figaro. Citizen journalist Rami al-Sayed, who streamed live video footage from Homs, was also killed this week in the shelling of the Baba Amr district of the city.
20 Feb 2012 | Index Index, Middle East and North Africa, minipost
Blogger and free speech activist Razan Ghazzawi was released on Saturday along with her female colleagues, after being arrested and detained last Thursday following a raid on the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression in Damascus. Ghazzawi’s sister tweeted that Razan had returned home but was not allowed to leave the country. Razan’s male colleagues remain detained.