New York, May 27, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) welcomes the recent release of Ibrahim Hemaidi, the Damascus bureau chief of the pan-Arab, London-based daily Al-Hayat. Hemaidi, who was released on Sunday, May 25, had been detained since December 23, 2002, when he was arrested for writing an article discussing the Syrian government’s alleged…
New York, May 27, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released an investigative report today about the April 8 shelling of the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad by U.S. forces, which killed two journalists and wounded three others. CPJ’s investigation, titled “Permission to Fire,” provides new details suggesting that the attack on the journalists, while not…
New York, May 22, 2003—Two Palestinian journalists were recently brutally assaulted by Israeli soldiers after leaving a party in the West Bank city of Bethlehem. In the early morning hours of Tuesday, May 20, Shaaban Qandil, a cameraman with the Arabic News Network, and Joseph Handal, a cameraman with France 2, had just left Handal’s…
New York, May 15, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is alarmed by recent measures taken against the press in Sudan, including the arrest of one journalist and the closure of a newspaper. Noureddin Madani, editor of the daily Al-Sahafa, told CPJ that Yousef al-Bashir Moussa, the newspaper’s correspondent in the city of Nyala, (about…
New York, May 12, 2003—Moroccan journalist Ali Lmrabet, who began a hunger strike on Tuesday, May 6, to protest continued government harassment, is scheduled to appear in a court in the capital, Rabat, tomorrow to face charges including “insulting the king” and “challenging the territorial integrity of the state.” According to Lmrabet, in April, police…
New York, May 9, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply saddened by the death of Elizabeth Neuffer, a veteran foreign correspondent for The Boston Globe, and her translator, who were killed today in a car accident while on assignment in Iraq. According to The Boston Globe, the 46-year-old Neuffer died “when the car…
New York, May 5, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is appalled by the death of James Miller, a British free-lance journalist who was fatally shot on Friday, May 2, in the Gaza Strip. Miller, an award-winning documentary filmmaker, was with a crew in the town of Rafah in southern Gaza near the Egyptian border…