By: (AP) The Committee to Protect Journalists on Monday issued a protest to threats made against journalists covering celebrations among some Palestinians after the U.S. terror attacks.
"These acts of intimidation and censorship violate the most fundamental norms of free expression," the committee said in a letter to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. The letter urged Arafat "to ensure that Palestinian authorities immediately cease threatening journalists."
Palestinian police and gunmen prevented several news photographers and cameramen from documenting events in Nablus, in Israel's West Bank region, where groups of Palestinians celebrated the attacks by honking horns and firing live ammunition rounds into the air.
On Sept. 11, a free-lance cameraman on assignment for Associated Press Television News was summoned to a Palestinian Authority security office and told that the material must not be aired. He was warned that he would be held responsible and received what he interpreted as threats on his life. The AP protested the threats to the Palestinian Authority.
Three days later, several news photographers and cameramen working in the Gaza Strip were detained by Palestinian police and their equipment was confiscated. When the equipment was returned, some images and video had reportedly been erased.
The New York-based committee is a nonprofit organization.
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