Iraqi Journalists: Not So Liberated

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"Under a broad new set of laws criminalizing speech that ridicules the government or its officials, some resurrected verbatim from Saddam Hussein's penal code, roughly a dozen Iraqi journalists have been charged with offending public officials in the past year," reports Paul von Zielbauer. "Three journalists for a small newspaper in southeastern Iraq are being tried ... for articles last year that accused a provincial governor, local judges and police officials of corruption. ... On Sept. 7, the police sealed the offices of Al Arabiya, a Dubai-based satellite news channel, for what the government said was inflammatory reporting. And the Committee to Protect Journalists says that at least three Iraqi journalists have served time in prison for writing articles deemed criminally offensive. ... In May, a court in ... Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, sentenced two journalists ... to six-month suspended jail terms for an article claiming that a Kurdish official had two telephone company employees fired after they cut his phone service for failing to pay his bill."