New York, August 15, 2002—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is pleased to announce that a Kenyan journalist who was serving a six-month sentence in a maximum-security prison just outside the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, was released yesterday by presidential decree.
Njehu Gatabaki, an opposition member of Parliament and the publisher and editor-in-chief of Finance magazine, was found guilty on August 9 of publishing an “alarming” article and sentenced to six months in jail. On August 12, he was transferred to Kamiti Maximum Prison, which is notorious for its violent criminals [See CPJ’s letter, August 12]
The case stems from a December 1997 report in Finance, titled “Moi ordered Molo Massacre,” alleging that President Daniel arap Moi was responsible for ethnic clashes that plagued parts of Rift Valley Province in the early 1990s. Gatabaki was originally arrested on December 5, 1997, granted bail, and released. The case has been moving through Kenya’s backlogged court system since.
