Brazil: Call for press law repeal after arrest of website editor
Via Reporters sans Frontières.
Reporters Without Borders called today on Brazil to repeal its press offences law, which enabled the arrest on 26 October of editor and commentator José de Arimatéia Azevedo, of the Internet website Portal AZ (www.portalaz.com.br), which was shut down by a judge in Teresina (capital of the northern state of Piauí).
“He was arrested even though his lawyers said he had no intention of fleeing or avoiding a future court summons,” the worldwide press freedom organisation said. “The Brazilian parliament should repeal the 1967 press law, passed during the 1964-85 military dictatorship and giving judges the right to imprison journalists for their public comments or writings.”
Police arrested the editor in a raid on the Teresina offices of Portal AZ using a warrant issued a few hours earlier by Judge José Bonifácio Júnior at the request of lawyer Audrey Magalhães, who had been criticised in an editorial on the site.
Arimatéia Azevedo, who has long specialised in investigating organised crime, criticised online (under the pseudonym of Xico Pitomba) Antonio Rivanildo Feitosa da Silva, of regional TV station Meio Norte (his former employers), who was suing him for defamation and insults.
posted by Fergie @ 10/28/2005 03:31:00 PM
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