Photo Credits: Khamenei (AP/Enric Marti), Taylor (AP/POOL), Jiang (AP/Greg Baker), Mugabe (AP/Rob Cooper), Putin (AP/ITAR-TASS/Vladimir Rodionov), Castana (AP), Kuchma (AP), Castro(AP), Ben Ali (AP/Remy de Mauviere), Mahathir (AP/Itsuo Inouye).

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) today named the Ten Worst Enemies of the Press, focusing attention on individual leaders who are responsible for the world's worst abuses against the media. This year, repeat offenders Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of Iran and President Jiang Zemin of China are joined by Liberian president Charles Taylor at the top of CPJ's annual accounting of press tyrants.

Khamenei, the religious leader who exercises enormous influence over key institutions in Iran, is the instigator of a relentless campaign that has shuttered the country's vibrant reformist press by closing dozens of newspapers and jailing outspoken journalists. In Liberia, Taylor has used censorship, prison, and threats of violence to silence virtually all independent media. China's Jiang appears on CPJ's list for a fifth straight year, for maintaining the Communist Party's obsessive control over information, enforced in part via harsh prison sentences that have now made China the world's leading jailer of journalists.

In addition to Taylor, three other press offenders, each using very different methods to intimidate media in their countries, are also new to CPJ's list this year: President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, President Vladimir Putin of Russia, and Colombian paramilitary leader Carlos Castano. CPJ put Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma back on the list (he last appeared in 1999), and once more named perennial press freedom offenders President Fidel Castro of Cuba (a seven-year veteran of the press enemies list), President Zine Al-Abdine Ben Ali of Tunisia (listed for four years), and Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad (listed for three years).

"Although three of last year's worst press enemies - Sierra Leonean rebel leader Foday Sankoh, Peru's Alberto Fujimori, and Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia - were ousted from power in the past year, there was no shortage of candidates to replace them," said CPJ executive director Ann Cooper. "Whether they are sly or blatant, the goal of each of these leaders is to hold on to political power by controlling information and muffling criticism," Cooper said.

"President Putin, for example, pays lip service to press freedom in Russia, but then maneuvers in the shadows to centralize control of the media, stifle criticism, and destroy the independent press. Others, like Mahathir in Malaysia, don't even bother to try to hide their abuses behind a screen of empty rhetoric," said Cooper. "We hope that by naming these ten press tyrants, we can focus world attention on their deeds and, by exposing them, bring about change."