 AMENDED. Egypt’s media laws. A last-minute change removed a draft law that would make it a jailable offense to accuse government officials of corruption in the media; nonetheless, Egyptian journalists still can face jail time for insulting the president or foreign heads of state.
Changes to the media laws also “doubled fines for journalists and editors convicted of defamation and a range of vaguely worded offenses. Fines now reach as high as 40,000 LE (US$7,000),” according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
AMENDED. Iranian procedures for media-related trials. According to English-language Iran Daily, President Ahmedinejad implemented a law passed last June that gives the government, instead of the press association as previously, the right to appoint the jurors in such cases.
August
SHELLED. Fadel Shana and Sabbah Hmaida, by Israeli forces in Gaza. Shana, a freelance cameraman for Reuters, and Hmaida, a cameraman with Media Group, a private Palestinian TV facilities house, were driving in their clearly-marked armored car. Both suffered wounds from shrapnel.
RELEASED. Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig, by the previously-unknown Holy Jihad Brigades in Gaza. The two Fox News journalists, a correspondent and a cameraman, had been held for two weeks. They were forced to claim to have converted to Islam on camera during their captivity.
BOMBED. Iraqi daily Al Sabah, where 2 unnamed employees were killed and 25 injured after a car exploded at the newspaper’s offices. A second bomb went off at the same time outside the Palestine Hotel, which is mainly used by foreign journalists and houses several news bureaus.
September
KILLED. Ahmed Riyadh al-Karbouli, Safa Isma'il Enad, Hadi Anawi al-Joubouri, and Abdel Karim al-Rubai, who died in four separate attacks by unidentified assailants in Iraq. Karbouli, a correspondent for Baghdad TV, was killed in a drive-by shooting in Ramadi; Enad, a freelance photographer, was shot at a photo shop in Baghdad; al-Joubouri, journalist and representative of the Iraqi Journalists Syndicate, was ambushed between Baquba and Khalis, northeast of Baghdad; Rubai, design editor for Al Sabah, was shot while traveling to work.
ARRESTED. Kalshan al-Bayati, Mahmoud al-Tamimi, Ahmad Mutair Abbas, and Ali Fayyad al-Dulaimi by the Iraqi government. Al-Bayati, a correspondent for Al-Hayat newspaper, was arrested in late September – no charges have yet been filed; while Editor-in-Chief al-Tamimi, Managing Editor Abbas, and former reporter al-Dulaimi of Sada Wasit newspaper have been charged with defamation for articles alleging corruption in local government and security forces in the southern city of Kut. In an apparently unrelated twist, Abbas was kidnapped and held for a week while on his way to a hearing.
HELD WITHOUT CHARGES. Bilal Hussein, a Pulitzer prize-winning photojournalist working for the Associated Press in Iraq, by US military forces since April. Joel Simon of the Committee to Protect Journalists said that seven Iraqi journalists had been detained for periods of weeks or months by US forces in the last 18 months.
BEHEADED. Mohammed Taha Mohammed Ahmed, editor-in-chief of the private daily Al-Wifaq, by unknown assailants in Sudan. He had angered Islamists by running an article about the Prophet Muhammad, and had written critical articles about armed groups in Sudan’s western Darfur region as well as the political opposition.
SUSPENDED. Al Arabiya news channel, for one month, by the government of Iraq. Hours after police occupied the station’s Baghdad office on September 7, an official statement charged the satcaster with “distortion of facts and inaccuracies” as well as provoking sectarian tension and promoting violence. The bureau reopened on October 10.
Al Arabiya was previously shut down by the then US-backed interim government from November 2003 to January 2004. Rival news network, Al Jazeera is now limited to operating out of Kurdish areas in northern Iraq after having been banned by the Iraqi government in July 2004.
CENSORED. Two Sudanese newspapers, on September 14. Security forces seized the entire print run of Ra’y Al-Shaab, an opposition daily, and government censors blocked so many articles of that day’s issue of the independent daily Al-Sudani that it was unable to publish.
FREED. Paul Salopek, Suleiman Abakar Moussa and Idriss Abdelrahman Anu, by Sudanese authorities after a one-month imprisonment. Salopek, a two-time Pulitzer winner reporting for the Chicago Tribune, was accused of espionage, and held along with Moussa, his interpreter, and Anu, his driver. The decision to release them was made by Sudanese president Omar Al-Bashir.
RELEASED. Ramin Jahanbegloo and Mojtaba Saminejad, from prison in Iran. Jahanbegloo, a journalist, was held in solitary confinement in Tehran’s Evin prison for four months. Iranian intelligence minister Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejeie accused him of spying and “attempting to carry out a velvet revolution.” Saminejad, a blogger, served 18 months of a 2 year, 10 month sentence.
HARASSED. Summer Said, a reporter for Reuters in Cairo, by Egyptian security services. She was followed home by security agents, and expressed fears that she could be banned from leaving the country.
BANNED. The September 19 edition of French daily Le Figaro, in Tunisia and Egypt, for printing an op-ed piece that “offended Islam.” Egypt also banned issues of the German daily Frankfurter Allegemein and the weekly edition of the British paper The Guardian, both for carrying pieces claiming Islam was spread by violence.
CLOSED. Three publications and an independent news website, by Iranian authorities. The reformist daily Shargh and monthlies Nameh and Hafez were closed on September 11, and Advar News, a news website linked to an independent student group, was shut down a week later.
ARRESTED. Omar Amiralay, a director and documentary-maker, by Syrian authorities. His award-winning 2003 film, A Flood in Baath Country, which has been seen as harshly critical of the Syrian government, was shown on Al Arabiya a week earlier. He has been barred from leaving the country.
JAILED. Muhened Abdulrahman, an online journalist, in Syria. He was arrested in early September for posting articles to independent news websites. With the release of pro-Kurdish writer Mohammed Ghanem in early October after five months in prison, Syria is now holding 3 prisoners for their online writing.
DEPORTED. Léa Labaye, a French journalist and contributor to the satirical website Bakchich.info, from Tunisia. She was sent back to Paris without any explanation upon her arrival.
HELD WITHOUT CHARGES. Abu Obeida Abdallah, by Sudanese security forces. Abdallah, a reporter for the pro-government daily Al-Ra’y Al-Aam, was held incommunicado and without charges.
October
SHOT. Jassem Hamad Ibrahim, a driver for Iraqi state television channel Al-Iraqiya by unidentified gunmen in Mosul, Iraq.
FREED. Ali Abdallah and Mohammad Abdallah, father and son, from a Syrian prison on completing a six-month sentence for “criticizing the state of emergency laws” and “insulting the president of the state security court.” The elder Abdallah is a freelance journalist and contributor to newspapers in Lebanon and the UAE.
KILLED. Eleven employees of Shaabiya television station in Baghdad, in an attack by masked gunmen in the single deadliest attack on a media organization since the beginning of the Iraq war. Abdul-Rahman Nasrallah, head of the National Justice and Progress Party, the small secular party that owned the station and one of the station’s board of directors, was among the dead. Others included guards, technicians, and administrative staff, according to the station’s executive director, Hussein Kamil. The staff had been sleeping in the station building, and according to Kamil many of them had been shot while still in bed.
The National Justice and Progress Party fielded candidates in the last two Iraqi elections, but failed to win a seat. The station, staffed by a mixture of Sunnis, Shi’ites and Kurds, was recently established and had only aired test broadcasts of patriotic songs. 10 days earlier, a car bomb outside the al-Rafidayn TV station killed two passersby.
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