Alerts

New York, December 28, 2006—The publisher of the independent Moroccan weekly Le Journal Hebdomadaire and a former reporter have been ordered to pay the record damages awarded earlier this year in a controversial defamation suit. Publisher Aboubakr Jamaï said the award could jeopardize the magazine’s survival.

Jamaï told CPJ that two court officials visited Le Journal‘s Casablanca office on December 18 and gave him and former reporter Fahd al-Iraqi one week to pay a damage award of the 3 million dirhams (US$354,000) and fines in the amount of 100,000 dirhams (US$11,800). A Rabat court awarded damages in February to the head of a Belgium think tank who said the magazine defamed him in a 2005 article. The award, which was upheld on appeal in April, is the largest ever levied against a Moroccan publication in a defamation case, according to Le Journal.

New York, December 27, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned by the criminal convictions on Tuesday of two Sudanese journalists in connection with a column critical of government perks.

A criminal court in the capital, Khartoum, ordered Zuhayr al-Sarraj, former columnist for the private daily Al-Sahafa, to pay a fine of 5 million Sudanese pounds (US$2,500) or spend one year in jail, according to the newspaper’s former editor, Noureddin Madani. Madani was also convicted in the case and ordered to pay a fine of 2 million Sudanese pounds (US$950) or spend six months in prison.

New York, December 27, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned by the criminal convictions on Tuesday of two Sudanese journalists in connection with a column critical of government perks.

A criminal court in the capital, Khartoum, ordered Zuhayr al-Sarraj, former columnist for the private daily Al-Sahafa, to pay a fine of 5 million Sudanese pounds (US$2,500) or spend one year in jail, according to the newspaper’s former editor, Noureddin Madani. Madani was also convicted in the case and ordered to pay a fine of 2 million Sudanese pounds (US$950) or spend six months in prison.

New York, December 26, 2006-The Committee to Protect Journalists mourns the December 22 killing of veteran Nigerian journalist Godwin Agbroko in the commercial city of Lagos. Agbroko, editorial board chairman of the private daily ThisDay, was found shot to death in his car, according to local and international media reports. Three police officers and two others were also found dead at the scene.

The circumstances of the killing remained unclear. Several initial reports said Agbroko was slain when he encountered the scene of a robbery, but those reports offered few other details. Local journalists told CPJ that Agbroko was killed by a single shot to the neck, and that his valuables were untouched. A police investigation is under way.

New York, December 26, 2006—Four unidentified men severely beat Nijat Huseynov, a reporter for the Baku-based opposition daily Azadlyg, on Monday morning, according to local and international press reports.

Huseynov told the Turan news agency that he had received anonymous threatening phone calls recently. The callers made reference to Huseynov's work but did not cite a particular article, he told Turan. The journalist had recently covered alleged corruption among high-ranking government officials.

New York, December 22, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by the banning in Morocco of an independent magazine and the charges brought against its director and a reporter for publishing an article analyzing popular jokes about religion, sex, and politics.
Driss Ksikes, the publisher and director of the weekly magazine Nichane, and reporter Sanaa al-Aji, were charged with denigrating Islam under Article 41 of the Press and Publication Law 2002. The charges stem from a 10-page article examining how popular humor reflects issues in society.

New York, December 22, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists called today for a full investigation into the detention of New York Times photographer Akhtar Soomro and the beating of reporter Carlotta Gall in Pakistan on December 19.

Gall, who covers Pakistan and Afghanistan for the Times, told CPJ that men who said they were from the special branch of Pakistan’s police, detained Soomro, a Pakistani national, in his hotel around 8pm, and seized his computer and camera.

New York, December 21, 2006--The Committee to Protect Journalists deplores the killing of Philippines radio broadcaster Andres Acosta, which police believe may be linked to his work. He was stabbed to death Wednesday in the town of Batac, 240 miles (390 kilometers) north of Manila.

"We join our colleagues in the Philippines in mourning the death of Andres Acosta, and calling for justice," said CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon. "The government must make progress in investigating and convicting those responsible for murdering journalists in the Philippines. The impunity with which killers operate has cost too many lives and hampered the ability of the press to report."

New York, December 18, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by an upsurge in arrests and the harassment of journalists by rival groups battling for control of Somalia. Both the Islamists who hold Mogadishu and the U.N.-backed transitional government based in Baidoa, northwest of the capital, have cracked down on the press this month.

On December 17, the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) in Mogadishu detained leaders of the respected National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ) at the airport. They prevented NUSOJ Secretary-General Omar Faruk Osman from boarding a plane for Dubai, and also detained the union’s Organizing Secretary Ali Moalim Isak who had accompanied Osman to the airport, local journalists said. Both men were held without charge for nearly 12 hours in a police station where officials pressed Osman to reveal the passwords to his e-mail accounts, and questioned him about the purpose of his trip, he later told CPJ. Officials seized the journalists’ passports, cell phones, a laptop, and other documents. They have not been able to leave the country.

New York, December 14, 2006—Three private radio journalists returned to prison today after their one-day trial in the capital, Bujumbura, according to local journalists. The three have been jailed for more than two weeks while a fourth journalist went into hiding after receiving a judicial summons. Since September, the government has cracked down on three prominent independent stations for their critical reporting of a disputed coup plot.