• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• Africa
• Americas
• Asia
• Europe & Central Asia
SNAPSHOTS
Attacks & developments throughout the region
ALGERIA
• Anis Rahmani, managing editor of the Arabic-language weekly Echourouk, told CPJ that he and reporter Naïla Berrahal received death threats in June from what they suspected was an al-Qaeda-affiliated group. “They threatened to kidnap and kill me if I did not stop writing articles they deemed against al-Qaeda and Islam,” he said. Rahmani told CPJ that on August 1, he received a letter from the General Directorate of National Security in Algiers informing him that, “based on the confessions made by a detained terrorist,” armed terrorist groups were targeting the editor.
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BAHRAIN
• In October, the High Criminal Court convicted three journalists on charges of libeling Fatima Buali, former director of Dar al-Manar for Elderly Care, according to news reports. Saleh al-Amm, editor of the now-banned online newspaper Al-Sahafa, and journalists Fareed al-Shayeb and Muath al-Meshari were each fined 200 dinars (US$533) and ordered to pay 50 dinars (US$133) in damages, according to the Bahrain Center for Human Rights. The journalists wrote several articles that alleged mismanagement of Dar al-Manar, according to news reports.
• Municipalities and Agricultural Affairs Minister Mansour Bin Rajab filed a criminal libel complaint against blogger Mahmood al-Yousif in February, according to news reports. In a December 2006 posting, the blogger took issue with Bin Rajab’s positive characterization of the ministry’s response to recent flooding. The minister withdrew his complaint in May after al-Yousif apologized, according to news reports.
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JORDAN
• The prosecutor’s office in the northwestern town of Ain al-Basha charged Khaled al-Khawaja, a reporter for the leading pro-government daily Al-Rai, with assaulting a public security officer, according to the journalist’s lawyer. The officer, Mohammad Qudah, filed his complaint after al-Khawaja accused him of assault, the journalist’s lawyer told CPJ. Qudah and two other public security officers insulted and severely beat al-Khawaja while he was on assignment covering the municipality’s distribution of meat to impoverished residents of Ain al-Basha in late January, the lawyer said.
• An amended press law took effect in May, increasing fines tenfold, to a maximum of 20,000 dinars (US$28,000), for “defaming any religion protected under the constitution,” “offending the prophets,” causing “insult to religious sentiments and beliefs, fueling sectarian strife or racism,” or committing “slanders or libels,” Agence France-Presse reported. Parliament considered but did not act on more extensive use of prison penalties. Journalists can still be imprisoned under
Jordan’s penal code.
• Four public security officers assaulted Aubaida Dammour, a reporter for Al-Ghad TV, and Fady Ramhy, a cameraman for the fledgling station, while the journalists were attempting to cover a bus drivers’ strike in Jordan’s capital, Amman, in early April, according to the Jordanian human rights organization Arab Archives Institute. The officers forcibly seized and destroyed Ramhy’s camera and briefly detained both journalists. The station filed an official complaint with the Public Security Directorate.
• Authorities banned the April 30 edition of the weekly Al-Majd, Fahd al-Rimawi, editor of the paper, told CPJ. He said that security agents intervened because of a front-
page story about a “secret plan” devised by the United States and unnamed Arab parties to oust the Hamas-led Palestinian government. Later that week, al-Rimawi reached an agreement with authorities to place the story on an inside page, he said.
• On April 18, the Jordanian government seized a taped Al-Jazeera interview with former Crown Prince Hassan bin Talal. Al-Jazeera’s Ghassan Benjeddou told CPJ that intelligence officers stopped his producer at Amman’s Queen Alia Airport and confiscated the videotape of the interview. In the interview, Hassan spoke critically of Saudi Arabia and U.S. policies in the Middle East, Benjeddou said.
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KUWAIT
• On August 18, state security officers arrested Bashar al-Sayegh, an editor for the daily Al-Jarida, in Kuwait City, his lawyer said. Jassim al-Qames, another editor at the paper, told CPJ he photographed the arrest, prompting the officers to detain and beat him. Al-Qames was released the following day without charge. The prosecutor’s office accused al-Sayegh of insulting the emir of Kuwait, which violates both the penal code and the press law and carries a five-year prison sentence. The accusation stemmed from a comment made in an open forum on the Al-Ommah news Web site hosted by al-Sayegh. Web site administrators removed the comment several hours after it was made. The person who posted the comment was arrested on August 21.
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LEBANON
• The Lebanese Army restricted public access to the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp near Tripoli, in northern Lebanon, the day after fighting broke out between Fatah al-Islam—an extremist group in Lebanon—and the Lebanese Army on May 20. Officials initially told journalists it was for safety reasons. Journalists told CPJ at the time that they suspected the army was attempting to hinder coverage of the humanitarian crisis inside the camp, where, according to news reports, more than a dozen civilians were killed and 12,000 refugees forced to flee.
• Crews from three different television stations came under attack from civilians while covering the aftermath of a bomb blast in the mountainous town of Aley, to the east of Beirut, on the night of May 23. A crew from the Lebanese satellite-television channel New TV was interviewing residents and filming the site of the explosion when young men suspected of being loyal to anti-Syrian leader Walid Jumblatt attacked them, cameraman Ghassan al-Hagg told CPJ. New TV correspondent Christine Habib said she had been overheard saying that Lebanese residents were severely beating Syrian workers in the area in retribution for bombings. Crews from Iran’s state-run Arabic-language satellite channel Al-Alam and Hezbollah’s Al-Manar channel escaped unharmed.
• Photographer Wael al-Ladifi of the Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar, photographer Asad Ahmad of the Lebanese daily Al-Balad, photographer Ramzy Haidar of Agence France-Presse, and cameraman Ali Tahimi of the Iranian satellite channel Al-Alam said they were beaten by members of the Lebanese Army on May 24. The journalists told CPJ they were covering the exodus of thousands of Palestinian refugees from Nahr el-Bared to the nearby Beddawi camp when Lebanese soldiers warned them not to take pictures. The Lebanese Army Command-Orientation Department later called the journalists to apologize and assure them that those behind the beatings would be punished, the journalists said.
• On May 30, the U.N. Security Council established an international criminal tribunal to prosecute the masterminds behind the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri, who was killed along with 22 others in a Beirut bombing in February 2005. The resolution gives the tribunal jurisdiction over the cases of several journalists targeted for assassination prior to and following al-Hariri’s murder. They include Gebran Tueni, Al-Nahar managing director and columnist, and Samir Qassir, a prominent columnist for the daily, who were killed by bombs planted in their cars in 2005; and May Chidiac, a political talk-show host with the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation, who lost an arm and a leg in a car bomb explosion in September of that year. All were strong critics of the Syrian regime, which was alleged to have been involved in al-Hariri’s assassination. Their cases remain unsolved.
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LIBYA
• A Tripoli court sentenced to death three suspected murderers of freelance journalist Daif al-Ghazal al-Shuhaibi, the journalist’s brother told Agence France-Press in mid-July. Al-Ghazal’s body was found in a suburb of Benghazi, about 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) east of Tripoli, in early June 2005. He had been a journalist for the government-owned daily Azahf al-Akhdar and a contributor to the London-based Web sites Libya al-Youm and Libya Jeel. Al-Ghazal had publicly criticized Libyan officials in his articles for the Web sites, accusing them of corruption and “stealing the public’s money.” Details of the prosecution were scant, prompting concern among rights groups about whether the true perpetrators had been brought to justice.
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SAUDI ARABIA
• In August, the Saudi government banned the distribution and sale of the popular London-based daily Al-Hayat for four days due to coverage of sensitive issues in the paper’s local edition, a source at the paper told CPJ. An Al-Hayat source told Reuters that the Information and Culture Ministry had set “conditions” for lifting the ban, but the paper refused to comply. The Associated Press reported that the ban may have been triggered by an article about a Saudi member of the al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq and his close connection to clerics in the kingdom. The pan-Arab paper is owned by Prince Khaled Bin Sultan, the eldest son of Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz.
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SYRIA
• The government issued regulations in July that require Web site administrators to identify individuals posting material on their sites. The effort appeared to be aimed at deterring critical commentary. Communications Minister Amr Salem ordered all of the country’s Web administrators to show “the name and e-mail of the writer of any article or comment,” Human Rights Watch reported.
ANALYSIS:
Under the Radar, a New Kind of Repression
By Joel Campagna
COUNTRY SUMMARIES:
Egypt
Iran
Iraq
Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory
Morocco
Sudan
Tunisia
Turkey
Yemen
SNAPSHOTS:
Algeria, Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Syria
Country summaries in this chapter were reported and written by Senior Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator Joel Campagna, Research Associate Ivan Karakashian, and Regional Representative Kamel Eddine Labidi.