Crisis: International

Killers of journalist sent to jail
EDRI VLADIMIR Pujols was sentenced recently to 30 years imprisonment for the Sept. 14, 2004 murder of journalist Juan Andújar in the Dominican Republic.
Andújar was host of the weekly radio show “Encuentro Mil 60” and a correspondent of the daily Listín Diario. Pujols was also ordered to pay the equivalent of 30,000 euros (P1.941 million) in compensation to another journalist, Jorge Luis Sención, who had to have an arm amputated after being attacked by Pujols because he had witnessed the murder of Andújar.
Fellow gang-member Juan Ricardo Muños Herrera was sentenced to five years in prison and ordered to pay a fine of 7,000 euros (P452, 927.45) for conspiracy. The court said it could not try a third member of the gang, Maikel Bienvenido Agramonte, because he was a minor at the time. His case will be transferred to a court for minors.
Andújar, a respected journalist with 20 years of experience, was also a professor at the Technology University of Azua and president of an environmental organization.—RSF/IFEX

Inquest into death of 5 journalists resumed
AFTER SUSPENDING hearings for two months, a Sydney coroner resumed on May 2 the inquest into the murders of cameraman Brian Peters and four other journalists in East Timor. The five journalists, all employed by Australian news media, were killed 32 years ago in the town of Balibo at the start of the Indonesian invasion of East Timor.
David Jenkins, a former editor of the Sydney Morning Herald’s international service, told the inquest that Indonesian army officers were aware of the journalists’ presence in Balibo before they took the town.
Then prime minister Gough Whitlam continues to insist he did not know about the deaths of the five journalists until five days after the event. He is scheduled to testify to the coroner on May 8. Australia’s ambassador to Indonesia in 1975, Richard Woolcott, has not been summoned although he met senior Indonesian army officers shortly before the killings.—RSF/IFEX

2 journalists jailed for ‘inciting religious hatred’
A COURT in Azerbaijan jailed two journalists on May 4 over an article that said Islam was hampering economic and political progress.
Reporter Rafiq Tagi and editor Samir Sadagatoglu of the newspaper Senet were convicted for inciting religious hatred and sentenced to three and four years in prison, respectively.
Tagi and Sadagatoglu published an article on Nov.1 titled, “Europe and Us,” which said that Islam’s influence was hindering Azerbaijan’s economic and political development, according to international press reports. The journalists were detained that month and held in pretrial detention for more than four months.
Tagi, who wrote the article, told the court that he was innocent and did not intend to insult religious sensitivities, the independent Turan news agency reported. Raset Pirisoyu, the chairman of the Committee to Defend the Rights of Samir Sadagatoglu, told the Committee to Protect Journalists that the journalists would appeal.—CPJ/IFEX

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