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Harassed
February 22
Boubacar Sankanu, Free-lancer, IMPRISONED, HARASSED
Sankanu, a free-lancer for the biweekly newspaper The Point, Voice of America (VOA), Radio Deutsche Welle, and the British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC), was detained incommunicado for one week and interrogated about his reports for VOA. He was released on bail, without charge, and directed to report daily to the police for one week. Sankanu was also "strongly encouraged" by state security agents to cease filing radio reports for broadcast on international networks.
June 13
Ansumana Badjie, The Point, THREATENED, HARASSED
Badjie, a senior reporter for the independent newspaper The Point, was arrested on June 13 by the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) and detained for an hour in the police station of the rural town of Soma. Badjie was in Soma to cover a June 3-15 tour by the Armed Forces Provisional Ruling Council (AFPRC) of its rural infrastructure projects. The NIA accused him of referring to the tour in print as a "political tour" and of writing other unspecified "negative reports." The NIA agents seized his documents and manuscripts before releasing him, but said they were "not finished" with him yet. When Badjie returned to The Point's head office in Fajara at the end of the tour, he reported the arrest in the newspaper's June 17 issue. On June 18, The Point's bureau in the capital of Banjul informed him that two officers from the "serious crimes unit" had been looking for him there. Badjie has since gone into hiding.
June 28
Boubacar Sankanu, Free-lancer, HARASSED
Sankanu, the Banjul stringer for the Voice of America, was stopped by immigration officials at a checkpoint and prohibited from leaving The Gambia. Sankanu was on his way to Senegal to cover stories there. Police claimed that he has been under surveillance since he was released from detention Feb. 29, and must obtain police clearance to cross borders.
July 22
Boubacar Sankanu, Free-lancer, THREATENED, HARASSED
Sankanu, a stringer for the Voice of America, was interviewing spectators at a Banjul celebration when three intelligence officers detained him and drove him from the event to a distant road. They confiscated his script for a VOA story that quoted sources as calling for interim elections, and demanded he identify his sources or "pay the consequences." He was released the same day.
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