Case

Congolese Communications Minister Lambert Mende banned private daily Le Journal indefinitely on June 29, 2012, in connection with an editorial that he said incited racism and tribalism, local press freedom group OLPA reported.

Four armed men abducted Franck Fwamba, editor of the monthly magazine Mining News, and forced him into an unmarked car at around 6 p.m. on June 6, 2012, in the southern city of Lubumbashi, according to local journalists and the press freedom group Journaliste en Danger (JED).

On October 10, 2012, Israeli soldiers raided the home of Mohammed Atallah al-Tamimi, a Palestinian journalist for the private Tamimi Press Agency in the West Bank town of Nabi Saleh, according to news reports. Al-Tamimi was arrested and taken to an unknown location, news reports said. Authorities have not disclosed his whereabouts, condition, or the charges against him.

State security agents barred a journalist from covering an October 15, 2012, hearing of a Supreme Court case of seven prisoners on death row, according to local journalists and news reports.

Security agents arrested Nasir Fazol, a reporter and printing technician for the independent daily Citizen, on September 5, 2012, and released him three days later without charging him, according to news reports.

Police from the semi-autonomous republic of Somaliland detained two journalists without charge on September 13, 2012, and released them four days later, according to local journalists.

Two Egyptian journalists were assaulted on September 14, 2012, in two separate episodes while covering protests against an anti-Islam film, according to news reports.

A radical militant Islamist group released an 18-minute video on May 1, 2012, that threatened attacks on at least 14 local and international news outlets, according to news reports. In the video, Boko Haram, a group seeking the imposition of Sharia law in northern Nigeria, accused the outlets of biased reporting and crimes against Islam and also claimed responsibility for prior attacks on newspapers, news reports said.

At least five radio stations were attacked in March 2012 as Tuareg separatists, allied with extremist Islamist militants, pushed the Malian army back from the northeastern region of Gao, according to news reports.

Armed men in plainclothes raided the offices of CNN in the commercial capital of Lagos on January 16, 2012, amid nationwide protests over hikes in fuel prices, according to local journalists and news reports.