Alerts

New York, May 21, 2002—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released a special report today calling on the government of Mozambique to step up its inquiry into the killing of investigative journalist Carlos Cardoso.

The report, "The Murder of Carlos Cardoso," was written by CPJ Africa program coordinator Yves Sorokobi and is based on new interviews and extensive research conducted by a CPJ delegation that visited Mozambique last year.

Bogotá, May 21, 2002—Two newspaper reporters and their driver were kidnapped by the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) on May 16 in northern Colombia. According to local police, the rebels freed one of the reporters the following day.

Nidia Álvarez Mariño and Ramón Vásquez Ruiz of the Santa Marta­based daily Hoy Diario del Magdalena were abducted Thursday morning in Magdalena Department, said Mónica Pimienta, an editor at the paper. Álvarez was freed unharmed the following morning, but the rebels continue to hold Vásquez and the driver, Vladimir Revolledo Cuisman, Pimienta told the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

New York, May 17, 2002—The man accused in the July 2001 murder of prominent television journalist Igor Aleksandrov was acquitted today by the Donetsk Court of Appeals in eastern Ukraine.

The court ruled that there was not enough evidence to convict Yuri Verdyuk and instructed officials to reopen the murder investigation, according to local and international news reports.

Law enforcement officials arrested Verdyuk in August 2001, a month after Aleksandrov's murder. The General Prosecutor's Office charged him with the murder in mid-December.

New York, May 15, 2002—The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes the release of journalist Sein Hlaing, one of nine political prisoners freed this week by Burma's military rulers.

The journalist had spent more than 11 years in prison.

A spokesman for the regime announced yesterday, May 14, that the prisoners, all members of the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD), "are in good health and reunited with their respective families."

New York, May 13, 2002—Panamanian journalist Miguel Antonio Bernal will go to court tomorrow morning to face criminal defamation charges filed in 1998 by then-National Police director José Luis Sosa.

During a February 1998 broadcast of the news program "TVN-Noticias," Bernal held the National Police responsible for the decapitation of four Coiba Island Prison inmates by fellow prisoners. After Bernal made his remarks, Sosa was quoted in the Panama City daily La Prensa as saying, "Apart from being false, Bernal's assertions are slanderous of the good name of the institution and help to debilitate the confidence and support that the community has given to the National Police."

New York, June 5, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalists joins with our colleagues at the Tribal Union of Journalists (TUJ) in mourning the death of Noor Hakim Khan, a correspondent for the Daily Pakistan and vice president of the TUJ in Peshawar. According to local media reports, Hakim was one of five people killed by a roadside bomb at about 6 p.m. on Saturday in the Bajaur region of the North West Frontier Province, near Pakistan's border with Afghanistan.

New York, May 10, 2002--In the latest wave of Iran's ongoing crackdown on the press, the country's conservative Press Court has sentenced two journalists to prison and banned three newspapers during the last two weeks.

CPJ learned that on May 8, Iran's Press Court convicted Mohsen Mirdamadi, a member of Parliament and director of the leading reformist daily, Norooz, of insulting the state, publishing lies, and insulting Islamic institutions in articles the paper had published.

New York, May 10, 2002—A Mexican newspaper publisher appeared on Wednesday, May 8, before a public prosecutor in Mexico City to respond to criminal defamation charges brought against him by a local politician.

Alejandro Junco de la Vega, president and publisher of the Mexico City daily REFORMA, was charged over an article alleging that Carlos Galán Domínguez, a member of the Mexico State Chamber of Deputies, had received improper payments from the Chamber.

New York, May 9, 2002—The Committee to Protect Journalists is extremely concerned about a series of menacing threats against four Colombian journalists, including an incident yesterday.

At around 6:30 a.m. on May 8, two men approached Carlos Pulgarín—a journalism professor at the Universidad de La Sabana, a private university in the capital, Bogotá—as he was walking toward the bus stop to go to work, the journalist told CPJ. One of the men grabbed him by the arm and the other patted him on the shoulder in a seemingly friendly manner. They were not visibly armed.