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Syria did not respond in court to the lawsuit, and Mr. Assad has publicly blamed Ms. Colvin for her own death, saying she had been “working with terrorists.”

the first court decision drawing on a pool of smuggled Syrian government documents that are being used in criminal prosecutions of Syrian officials by courts in Germany, France and elsewhere.

While the standard of proof is higher in criminal cases, war crimes lawyers welcomed the success of the Colvin lawsuit as an indication that the archive contains convincing evidence.

The plaintiffs detailed, through government records and defectors’ and other witnesses’ accounts, how the Syrian government had made a policy of cracking down on journalists and their assistants; how security officials tracked Ms. Colvin through informants and intercepted communications; how Syrian forces killed Ms. Colvin, hours after her last broadcast from Homs, by shelling the makeshift media center where she was staying; and how officials celebrated her death.

Ms. Colvin, a Long Island native who was 56 when she was killed, was a star of the British press, known for dedication and pushing the limits of risk to tell the stories of civilians affected by war. She was less of a household name in the United States, but the court’s decision comes amid a wave of new attention to her life and death.She was played by Rosamund Pike in the recent feature film “A Private War,” and was the subject of a biography by a fellow journalist, Lindsey Hilsum, and a documentary by Paul Conroy, the photojournalist who was her longtime reporting partner. He was seriously wounded in the attack that killed Ms. Colvin and Remi Ochlik, a French photojournalist.

In an August 15 case, six protesters faced charges of “insulting the military” before a military tribunal for chanting “antagonistic” slogans about Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the de facto ruler of the country, in addition to charges of assaulting a police officer. The military court sentenced Hassan Bahgat to six months in prison in another case, 3779/2011, for insulting the military in Tahrir square on August 6

Abu Bakr, a lawyer representing victims in the Mubarak trial and a Kifaya activist, received her summons to appear before the military prosecutor on charges of “insulting the military” on August 16. During the questioning, the prosecutor showed her video footage from the July 23 demonstration in Abbasiya, Cairo, of a protester who, the prosecutor told her, was “insulting” the military. The prosecutor dropped the charges against her when he realized the footage was not of her. Lawyer Ahmed Ragheb told Human Rights Watch that this footage was not filmed by the media, which would suggest that the military is filming protesters during demonstrations.

The Mubarak government frequently used overly broad provisions in the penal code to crack down on legitimate criticism of the government’s human rights record or criticism of the political situation, trying editors, opposition leaders, and activists on charges of “insulting the president” or “insulting public institutions.” The military government and courts are using the same provisions.

Military prosecutors have summoned at least seven activists and journalists, including Mahfouz, to question them on charges of criminal defamation after they publicly criticized the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), the military leadership, or alleged abuses by the army. The labor activist and blogger Hossam al-Hamalawy was summoned after he said on television that he held the head of the military police, Gen. Hamdy Badeen, personally responsible for acts of torture by the military police.

The United Nations Human Rights Committee, the expert body that provides authoritative interpretations of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Egypt is a party, states categorically in its recently-issued General Comment No. 34, on Article 19 on Freedom of Expression, that, “States parties should not prohibit criticism of institutions, such as the army or the administration.” By this standard, article 184 of the Egyptian penal code, which criminalizes “insulting the People’s Assembly, the Shura Council or any State Authority, or the Army or the Courts,” is incompatible with international law and should be amended accordingly, Human Rights Watch said

Sometimes, people receive text messages warning them of the consequences of buying certain newspapers. Thus, most people who buy such newspapers are those affiliated with the papers’ stands politically. The editor said they have turned to the web in an effort to disseminate information through that route, but when we spoke to him he said the website was blocked.

Although the media is allowed to cover parliamentary debates, those outlets that are allowed in receive instructions about what kind of coverage to provide; Once a fortnight, state TV broadcasts from 9:00 am to 12:00 am questions and answers from parliament, live, but opposition members have to ask their questions after 12:00; Since stateowned media ignore questions asked by opposition MPs, political parties try to disseminate them through their affiliated newspapers or websites. The problem is that through those channels exposure is very limited.

While in Tunisia, TMG members also attended a hearing by the appeals court in the southern town of Gafsa, in the case of journalist Fahem Boukadous, who had been charged following his coverage of labour unrest, including demonstrations against corruption, in southern Tunisia. Boukadous had been sentenced to four years in prison for “belonging to a criminal association” and “harming public order.” Boukadous had been hospitalized with breathing problems the day before the hearing. On the day this report was released, the Gafsa court upheld the sentence. Boukadous, a journalist with the Al-Hiwar Al-Tunisi satellite television station, went into hiding in July 2008 after discovering that he was wanted by the Tunisian authorities on charges sparked by his coverage of the demonstrations in Gafsa. He was sentenced to six years in prison in December 2008. Boukadous emerged to challenge the sentence in November 2009 on the basis that he had been tried in absentia. A court overturned the previous ruling, but said that Boukadous would again be tried on the same charges. In January of this year, the journalist was found guilty as charged and sentenced to four years in prison – upheld on 7 July.

Despite the dangers and claustrophobic environment, a number of independent journalists continue to attempt to carry out their profession. Often, they report on corruption – and the authorities react with redoubled wrath. In fact, it was a satirical mock interview with Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, in which he talks about his alleged nepotism, corruption and repression of political opponents, which renowned critical journalist Taoufik Ben Brik believes earned him a six-month jail sentence on fabricated charges of assaulting a woman in a car park.

Israel's Jewish schools barely teach Arabic, he observed, and students choosing it do so chiefly as a qualification for entering Israeli military intelligence.

When the head of Israel Railways was questioned in 2012 on why station stops were announced in Hebrew and English only, he replied that adding Arabic would "make the train ride noisy".

According to a survey, one in four Palestinian citizens struggle to read Hebrew. Farah, of Mossawa, noted that even when public bodies such as the transport ministry included Arabic, it was often so poorly translated from Hebrew that the information was unintelligible.

In February it was revealed that Tel Aviv University had barred Palestinian staff in its tuition department from speaking Arabic to students. The policy was reversed after threats of legal action.

Jewish and Palestinian parents in Jaffa staged a protest, accusing the Tel Aviv municipality of breaking promises to include Arabic signs and respect Muslim and Christian holidays at the city's first public bilingual school

Sawsan Zaher, a lawyer with Adalah, said the 2002 ruling had been a high point for recognition of Arabic in Israel, with the more liberal court of the time stating that it was vital to the dignity of the Palestinian minority that Arabic be used in public spaces in mixed cities. "In recent years Adalah has been very cautious about bringing more such cases to the courts," she told Al Jazeera. "Given the shift to the right in the intervening years, we are worried that the advances made in language rights then might be reversed by the current court."

The cyber-repression was made easier by the physical structure of Tunisia’s data flow, which runs through just a few choke points. In broad terms, the system has two distinct parts: one for intercepting phone-related traffic and one for the Internet, Saadaoui says.

In each of the three telecom rooms, which are about half the size of a tennis court, a handful of computers known as “boxes” straddle the data pipelines, Chakchouk says. Their function is to siphon off communications, mostly by searching for key words, according to Saadaoui. “You get all the traffic going through these boxes,” Saadaoui says. Once the system flagged a suspect e-mail, a fiber optic network under the streets of Tunis carried it from the telecom offices to the Interior Ministry’s operator room, Saadaoui says. Moez Ben Mahmoud Hassen, a spokesman for Tunisie Telecom, said the company “denies any possible relation with such practices.” He stressed that it follows the law and respects the confidentiality of communications. Asked about the company’s activities during Ben Ali’s government, he said it was a matter for the courts and declined to elaborate. Communications through mobile operator Orascom Telecom Tunisie, also known as Tunisiana, were not monitored, according to a statement released by company spokeswoman Fatma Ben Hadj Ali. The country’s other mobile operator, Orange Tunisia, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

By 2010, it became a contest as Tunisians increasingly employed encryption the packet inspection couldn’t crack. Communications on Facebook boomed, and the regime demanded better tools, Saadaoui says. The same European contractor that provided e-mail surveillance signed a deal to add monitoring of social networks, he says. It was too late. The supplier hadn’t yet delivered the solution when the “Facebook revolution” crested in January. The government’s last-ditch attempts to quell online organizing included hacking and password-stealing attacks by Ben Ali’s regime, outside the purview of the Internet agency, Saadaoui says. Slim Amamou, a blogger who was arrested during the uprising and briefly became a minister for youth and sport after the revolution, says the presidential palace and ruling party orchestrated the final cyber attacks.

Today, Chakchouk, the new head of Tunisia’s Internet authority says he’s working to dismantle Ammar 404, and turned off the mass filtering, he says. Now he’s locked in legal battles over court orders to block specific Web pages. On Saturday, May 7, he and his team pulled an all-nighter to set the filtering equipment to block a single Web page to comply with a military court’s demand related to a defamation complaint. The following Tuesday, still looking tired, Chakchouk says it took so long because they were figuring out how to replace the page with a message explaining the blockage -- rather than the customary Error 404. Since the revolution, Chakchouk has spoken at conferences around the world, decrying censorship. Yet he won’t say much about surveillance. For now, the packet inspection boxes are still on the network. “We tried to understand the equipment and we’re still doing that,” he says. “We’re waiting for the new government to decide what to do with it.”

Bloggers and their readers reacted angrily and quickly to the court decision, with nearly 9,000 users of the social-networking website Facebook joining a group called “Do not touch my blog” in less than two days after the decision was announced. Similar campaigns have also been created on other websites, such as Twitter

No company’s copyrights should come before me expressing my thoughts

“We would not see such a phenomenon [like this court decision] in more developed democracies, such as in the EU countries,”

Only seven Egyptians have held the field marshal rank since Egypt declared independence in 1952, and Sissi is the only one to hold it without fighting a war.

The limited footage displayed on state TV captured a defiant Morsi. “Who are you? Tell me,” he was shown yelling at the judge. “Do you know where I am?”“The head of the Criminal Court,” the judge replied.

“They have collaborated with Hamas, Lebanon Hezbollah, jihadists and the international Muslim Brotherhood organization to bring down the Egyptian state and its institutions,” the prosecutor read from the list of charges.

In the second part of 2017 in Turkey, more Twitter accounts were withheld and Facebook content restricted than in any other country

"I challenge both Twitter and the Turkish government to [find in my tweets] anything that can be considered illegal or harmful. My only crime is being a journalist."

"Twitter, Facebook, [and] Google...are responsible to their shareholders primarily, I don't consider them as guardians of the free speech. But the imbalance in the tools they offer to users versus governments make them complicit in the authoritarian rulers' crackdown against opposition."

Getting a court order to censor journalists is not a hard task in Turkey which, according to CPJ research, is the world's worst jailer of journalists. Human Rights Watch said in 2014 that "Turkish courts have tended to accede to government requests to block websites with apparent minimal, if any, scrutiny."

Amendments to law 5651 in 2014 gave authorities power to block sites without a court order. Google transparency reports show that since the amendments came into effect, the majority of removal requests came from judicial rather than executive orders. Law 5651 is "a very fast-track system [to block content] with almost no checks,"

In his U.N. report on regulation of user-generated online content published earlier this year, David Kaye, the U.N. special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, recommended that "companies should recognize that the authoritative global standard for ensuring freedom of expression on their platforms is human rights law, not the varying laws of states or their own private interests."

Egypt's top media body, the Supreme Council for Media Regulation, immediately took the channel off air for two weeks, citing "professional violations".

In addition to the jail term and fine, the misdemeanours court also ordered Ghiety to be put under surveillance for one year after serving his sentence

Egypt's media council banned homosexuals from appearing on any media outlet after a rainbow flag was raised at a concert in Cairo in 2017, in a rare public show of support for the LGBT community in the conservative, mainly Muslim country.

The authorities rely on a 1961 prostitution law that criminalises "habitual debauchery" to charge people who they suspect of engaging in consensual homosexual conduct.

Mr Sabry was also the lawyer who filed a case against Egyptian actress Rania Youssef on charges of "inciting debauchery" over a see-through outfit she wore at an awards ceremony last year. He later dropped the case after Ms Youssef apologised.

one of my colleagues told me that he is too afraid to go to the court because he knew that his attendance would be recorded by the police

“Shiite channels have been operating for years and have not caused strife or crises that Salafist channels ignite. This is because Shiite channels do not incite to violence and bloodshed and do not declare others to be infidels.”

Human rights activist and lawyer at the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression, Ahmed Ezzat, told Deutsche Welle in 2012 that the law does not criminalize embracing or promoting the Shiite faith. Shutting down any Shiite channel or prosecuting any promoter of the Shiite ideology would be based on a broad application of the law against blasphemy of religions, he said.

“The legal criteria in shutting down any station would be based on its content and on whether or not it is viewed as blasphemy or incitement against any religion or belief."

“some Salafist channels, such as al-Hafez and al-Nas, were shut down in 2013.”

“What is happening is a part of the chaotic media and religious discourse. There are 121 religious channels broadcasting via Nilesat, including more than 60 Shiite channels, some of which explain Shiite ideas in a moderate way," he said. "Others are extremist and incite against the Sunni sect. Sunni channels respond also to such incitement with counterincitement. Thus, all extremist channels — be they Shiite or Sunni — need to be taken down.”

many Shiite channels are not at loggerheads with the state institutions, but rather with some Salafist parties.

when the military took hold of the building, it became forbidden to mention the military. If you did something like that you’d be called ‘an agenda with ulterior motives.’ ”

He insisted that Al Ahram was no longer “the newspaper with one reader” — that was President Mubarak — but now sent its reporters out to truly cover the news. On Wednesday, he promised that Thursday’s front page would feature the photograph of an 84-year-old man who had brought a complaint to President Morsi’s new grievance office — a demonstration of the paper’s new empathy for the common man and fairness to President Morsi. But the picture did not appear; the headline featured a misleading quotation from Mr. Morsi suggesting he had backed down before a new court order again dissolving Parliament. “The media looks to the center of power,” said Hala Mustafa, editor of the state-financed journal Democracy. “I think everybody knows that the military council represents the center of power, the real comprehensive authority in the country.”