Sentenced

Istanbul, January 28, 2025—A court in the Kurdish-majority city of Diyarbakır on Tuesday found journalist Safiye Alagaş guilty of membership in a terrorist organization and sentenced her to six years and three months in prison. Alagaş, who spent a year behind bars in pretrial arrest, remains free pending appeal.  “The evidence brought against Kurdish journalist…

Istanbul, January 23, 2025–The 25th Istanbul Court of Serious Crimes came to a guilty verdict on Thursday in the retrial of five journalists arrested on terrorism charges in 2016, found guilty in 2018, and released on appeal in 2020. The court acquitted one other journalist. The defendants were charged for alleged ties to the recently…

New York, January 17, 2025—A Taliban court in the capital Kabul on January 1 sentenced Afghan News Agency reporter Mahdi Ansary to 18 months in prison on charges of disseminating anti-Taliban propaganda. “Mahdi Ansary’s unjust sentence is indicative of the Taliban’s continued brutality and suppression of press freedom in Afghanistan,” said Beh Lih Yi, CPJ’s…

New York, January 13, 2025—A court in Tajikistan’s southern city of Kulob on January 10 sentenced Ahmad Ibrohim, chief editor of the independent weekly newspaper Payk, to 10 years in prison on charges of bribery, extortion, and extremism. The closed-door trial was held in the city’s pretrial detention center, with authorities reportedly classifying the case…

New York, December 19, 2024—A Belarusian court convicted journalist Yauhen Nikalayevich of “organizing or participating in gross violations of public order” and sentenced him to 1½ years imprisonment on October 3 in the southwestern city of Pinsk. The sentence length was only made public on December 19 after a court upheld his conviction earlier this…

New York, December 12, 2024—A Belarusian court in Minsk, the capital, convicted freelance reporter Volha Radzivonava of discrediting Belarus, “incitement to racial, national, religious, or other social hostility or discord,” and defaming and insulting the president of Belarus, sentencing her to four years in jail on Tuesday. “Journalist Volha Radzivonava’s four-year prison sentence is yet another example of…

New York, November 26, 2024—The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Russian authorities to immediately release Russian journalist Nika Novak, who was sentenced by a court in the far-eastern city of Chita on Tuesday to four years in prison on “confidential cooperation with a foreign organization” charges.  “Nika Novak’s four-year prison sentence handed behind closed doors in the…

Washington, D.C., November 13, 2024—Egyptian authorities sentenced in absentia journalist Yasser Abu Al-Ela to 25 years in prison on Sunday, November 10, on charges of joining a terrorist organization and spreading false news. Separately, press freedom advocate Rasha Azab accused the Interior Minister and the head of the National Security Agency of orchestrating recent threats against her and surveilling her movements, which culminated…

Bangkok, October 31–A court in Hanoi sentenced Duong Van Thai, an independent Vietnamese blogger who went missing in Thailand and was later in Vietnamese custody in April 2023, to 12 years in prison and three years’ probation on Wednesday on charges of anti-state propaganda. “Vietnam’s harsh sentencing of blogger Duong Van Thai is grotesque and an outrage, particularly amid allegations he…

New York, October 25, 2024 – Tunisian authorities must immediately and unconditionally release political commentator Sonia Dahmani, who was sentenced on Thursday to two years in prison for spreading false news, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Friday. “Sonia Dahmani is already serving an eight-month prison term in Tunisia and sentencing her to two more…