Maria Ressa, a high-profile Philippine journalist and vocal critic of the country’s president, was arrested Wednesday in connection with “cyber libel” charges against Rappler, the news site she oversees.
Ressa was formally arrested after being served an arrest warrant by Philippines National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) officers, Rappler reported. She was later photographed by a media scrum entering NBI headquarters.
Rappler said the charges are over an article it published in 2012. Ressa was indicted in relation to that case last week, which Amnesty International criticized as “yet another absurd legal attack” that amounted to “harassment.”
Ressa, the chief executive of Rappler and a 2018 Time Person of the Year, has been indicted multiple times on libel and tax evasion charges that critics have described as politically motivated and designed to silence independent media in the southeast Asian country. Read more