New York, August 8, 2005—Michaël Didama, director of the private weekly Le Temps, was convicted on charges of defamation and incitement to hatred today and sentenced to six months in jail in connection with articles describing rebel groups in eastern Chad, according to local sources. The charges stemmed from May articles in Le Temps, one…
New York, August 8, 2005—Ethiopia’s Supreme Court has sentenced a newspaper editor to one month in jail on a contempt charge after the editor refused to identify an unnamed source who criticized an earlier court ruling. The editor of a second paper was fined in a related case. Tamrat Serbesa, editor-in-chief of the private Amharic-language…
New York, August 3, 2005—A journalist for the Mogadishu-based independent radio station HornAfrik was arrested in Jowhar last night following a critical report about transitional federal authorities, according to the Somali Journalists Network (SOJON) and other local sources. Abdullahi Kulmiye Adow was still in police detention late today, they said. It was not clear whether…
AUGUST 2, 2005 Posted: August 17, 2005 Abdullahi Kulmiye Adow, HornAfrik IMPRISONED, HARASSED Adow, a reporter for the Mogadishu-based independent radio station HornAfrik, was detained on August 2 by militia loyal to local faction leader Mohamed Dhere. Dhere is a supporter of Somalia’s Transitional Federal President Abdullahi Yusuf, who recently established a temporary headquarters in…
Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply troubled by the July 28 death of independent newspaper editor Harry Yansaneh. An autopsy attributed Yansaneh’s death to kidney failure. Yansaneh, acting editor of the daily For Di People, was assaulted on May 10 by a group of attackers. Prior to his death, Yansaneh alleged that Member of Parliament Fatmata Hassan had ordered the attack, according to local sources and press freedom organizations. Hassan, a member of your Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP), was seeking at the time to evict For Di People and five other independent newspapers from the office space they had rented from her family for many years. The other newspapers were The Independent Observer, The Pool, The African Champion, The Pioneer and The Progress.
New York, July 29, 2005—The managing director of the small private newspaper La Tolérance was arrested yesterday by judicial police, who have accused him of “discrediting” a state prosecutor in an article published in his newspaper. Jean Pierre Phambu Lutette has been jailed in a cell at the public prosecutor’s department in the capital, Kinshasa,…
New York, July 28, 2005—A group of armed, uniformed soldiers yesterday stormed the Abidjan offices of state broadcaster Radiodiffusion Télévision Ivoirienne (RTI) and instructed directors not to broadcast footage of opposition members, according to CPJ sources and local news reports. The soldiers identified themselves as members of the Republican Guard but refused to give their…