Israel emerged as one of the world’s leading jailers of journalists following the October 7 start of the Israel-Gaza war, the Committee to Protect Journalists’ 2023 prison census has found. Israel ranked sixth – tied with Iran – behind China, Myanmar, Belarus, Russia, and Vietnam, respectively.

Middle East and North Africa
Egypt, routinely among the world’s worst jailers, tied with Turkey for the eighth-highest number of jailed journalists globally – 13 – in the 2023 census. Saudi Arabia was ninth, with 10 journalists behind bars.

Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Iraqi Kurdistan have all expanded the use of false news, terrorism, and anti-state charges against journalists in recent years. Egyptian authorities regularly work around legislation limiting prisoners’ pretrial detention to two years by filing additional charges to extend that period. Cases in point: freelancer Mohamed Said Fahmy, has spent more than four and a half years in pretrial detention after being arrested on false news and terrorism charges in 2018. He was scheduled for release in 2020 and 2021, but his detention was extended after prosecutors added further charges. Mostafa Mohamed Saad, a senior cameraman for Qatari broadcasting network Al-Jazeera, has been held in pretrial detention in Cairo on terrorism and false news charges since 2019. 

No new jailings were reported from Bahrain and Syria, which still held five journalists each in 2023, or from Morocco and Algeria, which each held three. Iraq’s four jailed journalists included one new prisoner in Iraqi Kurdistan. In Tunisia, Khalifa Guesmi was taken into custody in September to serve a five-year prison sentence on charges of disclosing national security information. Earlier in the year, an appeals court had increased his sentence from one to five years... Continue.