In Nigeria, Haruna Acheneje, a correspondent for "The Punch" newspaper, was arrested on 30 June by agents of Nigeria’s intelligence service, the State Security Service (SSS), in the city of Uyo. Acheneje was arrested by three SSS agents who arrived at the newspaper’s premises, and taken to the police station in Uyo. The journalist said he had been detained for about eight hours in solitary confinement, interrogated and subsequently released. He was reportedly questioned in connection with a story entitled, "Lawmakers got $1.2m to remove me - Ex Deputy Governor", which appeared in "The Punch" a few days earlier. Acheneje said he did not write the story in question.

  In Mali, Hamidou Diarra, a journalist for Radio Kélédou, was kidnapped and tortured by four men on 4 July. After putting a bag over the journalists head, Diarra’s unidentified assailants gave him a severe beating, broke a beer bottle on his head, slashed his hands and feet with glass shards and left him for dead on on a road outside Bamako.

  In Ethiopia, five more journalists were arrested on 30 June. Taye Belachew (senior editor), Tadesse Kebede (editor-in-chief) and Tegist Abrham (deputy editor-in-chief), all of the Amharic-language weekly "Lisane Hezeb", and Fassil Yenalem, editor-in-chief of "Addis Zena", and Daniel Gezahegne, editor-in-chief of "Moged", are the latest journalists to come under attack. The three "Lisane Hezeb" journalists, who were accused of printing a photo of the brutal arrest of two young demonstrators early last month, were freed on bail of 1,000 birr (95 euros) by a court. The public prosecutor will now decide whether to take the matter further. The two other journalists were released after making a statement to police about printing a reader’s letter criticising the silence of the Orthodox Church about the police crackdown on post-election disturbances.

  In Lesotho, Masupha Jobo, presenter of the phone-in talk show "Lijo’a Ke Baeti", broadcast on Catholic Radio (CR) FM, and the station’s manager, Sister Clementine Thatho, received threatening phone calls on 30 June, in connection with the programme that Jobo was hosting that day. The programme focused on the issue of the King’s brother, Prince Seeiso Bereng Seeiso, and his appointment as Lesotho’s High Commissioner to the United Kingdom. This has been a widely debated issue in Lesotho as most people have questioned how the prince, who is also the principal chief of Matsieng Royal Village in Maseru, could assume a political position. Jobo’s programme sought to get the public’s views and comments on the issue. During the broadcast, anonymous calls were made to the presenter and the station manager, insinuating that CR FM was becoming more opposed to the government and that Jobo had no business in the studio if he was to run programmes that were anti-government.

  In the Democratic Republic of Congo security forces harassed and detained several journalists covering opposition protests in the Congolese capital, Kinshasa, on 30 June. Members of the presidential guard arrested Basile Kokwalet, a Congolese cameraman for French public service television RFO-AITV as he was filming the start of the demonstration, according to a colleague who witnessed the arrest. Agents held Kokwalet at gunpoint, seized his equipment, and took him to the headquarters of the presidential guard. Security forces also detained Didier Lofombo, a camera operator with the private Kinshasa television station Horizon 33, holding him for about three hours, according to local sources.

  In Somalia, Sheekh Aduun, director of the Bossasso radio affiliate of the private STN network, and Awale Jama, an editor at the station, were arrested on 30 June in the city of Bossasso, in the self-declared autonomous region of Puntland. The radio station was closed down the same day. The arrests reportedly stem from the radio station’s reporting on the mayoral campaign in Bossasso. Police officers reportedly said to the the local press freedom organisation Somali Journalists Network (SOJON) that the journalists were accused of broadcasting "false information," and that their arrests were ordered by Puntland’s public prosecutor. Another Puntland journalist, Shacab editor Abdi Farah Nur, remains in prison since his arrest on June 19.

Sources for the alerts:
Ethiopian Free Press Journalists’ Association (EFJA), Addis Ababa
Human Rights Watch (HRW), United States
International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX), Canada
International Press Institute (IPI), Vienna, Austria
Journaliste En Danger (JED), Democratic Republic of Congo
Media Foundation of West Africa (MFWA), Ghana
Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA), Namibia
Media Rights Agenda (MRA), Nigeria
Network for the Defence of Independent Media in Africa (NDIMA), Nairobi, Kenya
Reporters Without Borders (RSF), France