Media News - Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Canadian teenager cries in Guantanamo interrogation video

A sobbing Canadian teenager begged for help as he was questioned in the first video glimpse of interrogations at the US "war on terror" prison at Guantanamo Bay released Tuesday. The video was posted online by attorneys for terror suspect Omar Khadr, who is shown being questioned at the prison by Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) agents in February, 2003. Khadr is the youngest detainee at Guantanamo, accused of killing a US soldier in a firefight in Afghanistan. He has been held at the US naval facility in eastern Cuba since his arrest in 2002, when he was 15 years old, and faces a US military commission on terrorism charges in October. The footage covers seven and a half hours of questioning over four days. An eight-minute video was initially posted on the Internet and a complete version on five DVDs was issued later on Tuesday by Khadr's lawyers, following a Canadian court order. The video shows no beating or physical abuse of Khadr. (AFP)

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Snoop law to be tried in European court

The Swedish government will have to defend the new FRA surveillance law in front of the European Court of Human Rights in a case filed by an independent law organization. The Sweden-based Justice Center (CFR) announced on Monday that it has decided to refer Sweden's controversial surveillance law to the human rights court in Strasbourg. Specifically, CFR contends the measure, which was narrowly approved by the Riksdag last month, violates Article 8 (guarantees citizens' right to privacy) and Article 13 (deals citizens' ability to hold national authorities to account for possible violations of the human rights convention) of the European Convention on Human Rights and has asked for judicial guidance. Moreover, the group sees the law's description of the threats to be controlled and the types of communication that can be monitored as too vague. CFR has based its case on a German case from 2006 as well as a recent ruling by the human rights court in which a similar surveillance law from the UK was judged to violate the European Convention on Human Rights. The CFR is also concerned over the lack of rights that a Swedish citizen has to the information collected on them. (The Local)

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Syrian leader alongside Sarkozy at Bastille Day parade: “A dark day for press freedom”

Shortly before the start of yesterday’s Bastille Day parade on the Champs Elysées, a group of about 20 Reporters Without Borders activists demonstrated there to show their disapproval and handed out leaflets to about the state of press freedom in Syria. The demonstrators also tried to wave placards showing photos of journalists imprisoned in Syria, Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco, but were forcibly removed from the area by the police. French President Nicolas Sarkozy invited all the foreign heads of state attending the Union for the Mediterranean launch summit to join him for today's ceremonies for They included Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who has been condemned by Reporters Without Borders as an enemy of press freedom. In Syria, Bashar al-Assad's Baath party rigorously stifles the slightest criticism using special laws introduced under the state of emergency that began in 1963, Reporters Without Borders says. National media are supposed to “defend the interests of the nation.” Four journalists and writers are imprisoned in Syria for condemning government violence. The Syrian government's ruthless censorship also affects material published on the Internet, the group reports. Five cyber-dissidents are imprisoned in the country, including author and poet Firas Saad who was sentenced to four years in prison in April 2008 for condemning the “defeatism” of the Syrian government in a website article. (Reporters Without Borders)

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Spain sets rules to stop false claims on Internet speed

The hollow promises and half truths about Internet access speeds made by Spain's telecommunications providers could soon be a thing of the past under new regulations unveiled by the government on Monday. As part of a new decree governing the telecoms sector, the government will seek to prohibit internet service providers (ISP) from advertising higher bandwidth for broadband connections than users actually receive. Providers will now have to guarantee at least 80 percent of the connection speed they advertise. Currently, ISPs advertise the highest theoretical internet access speed - a rate that in practice is only obtained by customers living in the direct vicinity of their telephone exchange. (El Pais via Expatica)

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Murat ‘settles claims’

Robert Murat, the first named suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, has settled libel claims against several British news outlets for GBP 500,000 (EUR 629, 733.3) it was reported today. Lawyers acting for Murat, 34, an Algarve-based property consultant, announced the libel action in April. The media outlets named in the original libel action were Sky, the Daily Express, Sunday Express, Daily Star, Daily Mail, Evening Standard, Metro, Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror, News of the World, The Sun and The Scotsman. In May, Murat secured an apology from The Scotsman for a piece it ran about the disappearance of four-year-old Madeleine from Praia da Luz in Portugal last year. The reported settlement follows legal action by Madeleine's parents Kate and Gerry which led to front page apologies from the Daily Express and Daily Star in March. The newspapers also agreed to make payments to the couple's Find Madeleine fund. (The Independent)

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New Kazakh media company perhaps threatening for independent press

A new Kazakh media holding company, made up of outlets that support the government, has what's left of the independent media more than a little worried. On July 3, the office of Prime Minister Karim Masimov announced the Arna Media National Information Holding had been created "in order to provide favorable conditions for increasing competitiveness of the information space of the Republic of Kazakhstan". To many, the cryptic announcement was understood to mean that the already bad situation for Kazakh independent media is about to become worse. Galia Azhenova, from the Kazakh nongovernmental International Foundation for Protection of Freedom of Speech, said the move was "suspicious". The partners in the new media holding read like a list of government supporters. Kazakhstan - the national television and radio company - and the Khabar news agency are both state-owned. President Nursultan Nazarbaev's eldest daughter once headed Khabar and still has considerable influence over the country's main news agency. The "Yegemen Kazakhstan" and "Kazakhstanskaya Pravda" newspapers date back to Kazakhstan's time as a Soviet republic and the two newspapers, housed for decades in the same building in Almaty, have not changed their agenda in reporting the news since those days. Also, Kazakh officials have been debating how to better control information posted on local websites. On July 3, an Almaty court ordered the activities of the site posit.kz suspended for three months after ruling the website posted material "inciting interethnic discord". Earlier this year, several Kazakh websites were blocked for carrying information believed to have originated from the Kazakh president's estranged former son-in-law, who has become a fierce Nazarbaev critic. (Radio Free Europe)

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