International Press Institute (IPI)

A threatening letter by banned Islamist group Ansarullah Bangla Team apparently targets people for their perceived support for war crimes trials stemming from Bangladesh’s bloody 1971 war of independence.

Police have reportedly opened an investigation centred on a man that journalist Haider Khan’s reporting implicated in a wrongful land transfer.

Jason Rezaian is being held on charges of spying and collaborating with hostile governments, gathering classified information and disseminating propaganda against the Islamic Republic. International observers have criticised the charges as being politically motivated.

Four years after Sierra Leone Journalist Ibrahim Foday’s death, members of IFEX join the Media Foundation for West Africa in calling for more rapid progress.

Recent developments in Egypt, including the sentencing of two well-known journalists to prison and claims by supporters that a group of journalists condemned to life imprisonment were being held in inhumane conditions pending appeal, mark a further deterioration in media freedom.

This mass confiscation of newspapers calls to mind a similar occurrence that took place on 16 February 2015, when Sudan’s National Intelligence and Security Services seized the print runs of 14 daily newspapers without any explanation.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed that an editor would “pay a high price” for reporting on the country’s role in sending weapons to Syria, the latest in an alarming series of attacks on critical media ahead of a 7 June parliamentary election.

The development is particularly concerning given the fact that Darwish and his fellow imprisoned colleagues from the Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression were not brought to court and their whereabouts remain unknown.