Paris press freedom watchdog Reporters Sans Frontiers offered the suspended Algerian daily La Tribune a page on its Internet site to give it an airing during the six-month ban. An Algiers court suspended La Tribune for six months on September 3 over a cartoon mocking the Algerian flag. Algerian media have been caught in the four-year-old civil strife between the authorities and Muslim fundamentalist rebels and 57 journalists have been murdered by suspected rebels. Reporters Sans Frontiers said authorities had suspended or seized newspapers on 55 occasions and 23 journalists had been held for more than 48 hours since strife broke out over cancellation of the 1992 general election fundamentalists were poised to win.
