North Africa & Middle East

Iran (1)

Morocco (1)

Sudan (1)

Tunisia (1)

Iran (1)

Akbar Ganji
Arrested: April 22, 2000
Ganji, a leading investigative reporter for the now defunct reformist daily Sobh-e-Emrooz and a member of the editorial board of the now defunct, pro-reform daily Fath, was arrested and prosecuted in both Iran’s Press Court and Revolutionary Court. The case in the Press Court stemmed from Ganji’s investigative articles about the 1998 killings of several dissidents and intellectuals that implicated top intelligence officials and former President Hashemi Rafsanjani. In the Revolutionary Court, Ganji was accused of making propaganda against the Islamic regime and threatening national security in comments he made at an April 2000 conference in Berlin on the future of the reform movement in Iran. The status of the case in the Press Court remained unclear at the end of 2003, but on July 16, 2001, an appellate court sentenced Ganji to six years in jail.

Morocco (1)

Anas Tadili
Imprisoned: April 15, 2004
Tadili, editor of the weekly Akhbar al-Ousboue (News of the Week), was sentenced to one year in prison in late September after being convicted of defaming Economics Minister Fathallah Oualalou. The charges stemmed from an article Tadili published in April 2004 alleging that Oualalou is homosexual. Tadili was already in prison at the time of the sentence serving a six-month term that began on April 15 for a prior currency violation that had been mysteriously revived. According to his lawyer, several other defamation charges have been filed against Tadili.

Sudan (1)

Hussein al-Kholaji, Alwan
Arrested: November 22, 2004
Released: January 5, 2005 Sudanese authorities detained al-Khojali, editor of the daily Alwan, a newspaper close to the opposition Popular Congress Party, less than two months after he was released from detention in September. Local journalists said al-Khojali was originally detained along with several other members of the Popular Congress Party after authorities alleged that the party had engineered an attempted coup. Sudanese journalists believe that al-Khojali was detained because he wrote an article disputing the Sudanese government’s version of the alleged coup plot. The second arrest reportedly occurred after that al-Khojali had again written articles that criticized the government. It is not known where al-Khojali is being held.

Tunisia (1)

Hamadi Jebali
Arrested: January 1991
On August 28, 1992, a military court sentenced Jebali, editor of Al-Fajr, the now defunct weekly newspaper of the banned Islamic Al-Nahda Party, to 16 years in prison. He was tried along with 279 other individuals accused of belonging to Al-Nahda. Jebali was convicted of “aggression with the intention of changing the nature of the state” and “membership in an illegal organization.” During his testimony, Jebali denied the charges and presented evidence that he had been tortured while in custody. Jebali has been imprisoned since January 1991, when he was sentenced to one year in prison after Al-Fajr published an article calling for the abolition of military courts in Tunisia.