Middle East & North Africa

Sudanese authorities have a long history of closing newspapers and silencing journalists. But the government security agents who carry out official censorship have launched a new strategy this year that focuses on economic impoverishment--leaving newspapers more vulnerable than ever.

New York, April 4, 2012--Iraqi journalist Kamiran Salaheddin was killed when a bomb attached to his car exploded late Monday, according to news reports. CPJ is investigating the circumstances of the attack to determine whether it was related to his work.

New York, April 4, 2012--A Bahraini videographer died Saturday morning after being shot while filming a protest outside the capital, Manama, according to local journalists and news reports.

New York, April 4, 2012--The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the Palestinian Authority's recent anti-press actions in which one journalist was detained for a week for reporting on alleged corruption and spying and a second was questioned over a critical article and his posts on social media. These actions occurred despite the Authority's recent announcement of a press freedom award that it claimed would reward "quality and daring material."

New York, April 2, 2012--A prominent Syrian videographer who ran the media center in Baba Amr where two foreign journalists were killed in February has been detained since Wednesday, according to news reports. 

Ali Mahmoud Othman was initially held at a military intelligence unit in Aleppo and is believed to have been tortured, Paul Conroy, a photographer for The Sunday Times, said in an interview with the U.K.'s Channel 4. Activists were cited in news reports giving the same information. Conroy and other reports said Othman was transferred to Damascus over the weekend.

Syrian cartoonist Ali Ferzat is wielding his pen once more. According to news reports, the famous cartoonist, who suffered a severe beating in August, has regained 90 percent of the movement in his hands, which were deliberately targeted by his attackers before they dumped him on the side of a road.

After the rash of political revolutions and criminal attacks on governments and companies last year, it wasn't hard to predict that 2012 would be the year of a cybercrime crackdown. The United States is considering its own cybercrime legislation, and the European Union is seeking to harmonize its member state's computer crime laws. Governments understandably want to prevent further online attacks. Journalists suffer these attacks also, but they don't necessarily gain from fiercer laws. And in the case of a proposed new cybercrime law in Iraq, they may face life imprisonment for simply doing their job.

New York, March 29, 2012--Iranian authorities have imprisoned two additional journalists as part of their three-year-long crackdown on the press, according to news reports. In addition, the BBC reported that its Web services had been targeted by a distributed denial-of-service attack, which the broadcaster believed originated from the Iranian regime. 

New York, March 27, 2012--Syrian security forces shot and killed two freelance international journalists and wounded a third during an attack on Monday in the town of Darkoush near the Turkish border, according to news reports and a witness interviewed by CPJ.

New York, March 21, 2012--An Israeli soldier broke the camera of a Palestinian journalist on Friday as the photographer was covering an anti-settlement demonstration near Bethlehem, a city in the West Bank, according to news reports.