In what journalists have referred to as the worst attack facing the Sierra Leone media since the war, the Editor and Managing Editor of the daily Independent Observer newspaper were yesterday charged on 26 counts of seditious libel against President Ernest Bai Koroma. Jonathan Leigh and BaiBaiSesayhad spent six days in police detention and were denied bail by magistrate Komba Kamanda despite pleas by their lawyer Ansu Lansana who was hired by the Sierra Leone Association of Journalists. Lansana is joined by lawyers Solomon Jamiru and Emmanuel Saffa Abdulai. The homes of the two journalists were also searched by police days after they had been picked up by plain-clothed policemen. The offices of the Independent Observer have also been subjected to daily incessant police raids, according to the staff who told Politico that they could no longer report for duty, effectively shutting down the newspaper. Four other editors of the Global Times and Salone Times newspapers were also invited to the police Criminal Investigations Department for questioning. Police say they were investigating them over a complaint of libel made against them by Dr Sylvia Blyden, Special Executive Assistant to President Ernest Bai Koroma. The editor and the publisher of Concord Times newspaper were also invited to the CID a day after police had ransacked their printing press offices. They were later released after statements had been obtained from them. A printer for Premier Media, Mustapha Jalloh has spent three days in detention. He was arrested after his printing press was ransacked by police who said they were looking for exhibits. The Managing Director of Premier Media, Dr Julius Spencer was also invited to police for questioning. He was released after spending hours at the CID headquarters. All this followed an emergency general meeting of the Sierra Leone Association of Journalists (SLAJ) where members condemned the arrests of their colleagues and the raids on media houses. Journalists agreed a boycott of the weekly Thursday government press briefing and a media blackout on a date to be later agreed. In an ensuing press release SLAJ said it was “appalled at the sustained attack on the media and media practitioners over the past seven days.” It said that the attacks could not be unconnected to a threat issued against the Sierra Leone media some months ago by Sylvia Blyden, adding that in the last week five media houses and eleven media practitioners had been arrested, interrogated and some detained by police. “It is a sad day for democracy. The journalists Human Rights have been violated by unconstitutionally detaining them for more than three days and as such this government can no longer lay claim to any human rights record again” says Kelvin Lewis, President of SLAJ. The main opposition Sierra Leone People’s Party has also condemned the attacks calling them a “crackdown on press freedom and democracy” in the country. In a statement, the party said that “journalists have been continuously arrested and press houses raided using the infamous and archaic seditious and criminal libel laws”.
It expressed concern over “the practice of using the Sierra Leone Police to intimidate journalists in the midst of an Independent Media Commission (IMC), a state institution responsible for regulating the media is a deliberate move by the Government to undermine state institutions.” The SLPP called for the “immediate release” of the journalists and the cessation of the raids on press houses, a referral of all media-related matters with the police or the courts to the IMC for arbitration, and for an engagement by civil society and international community of the government on the matter. (C) Politico 24/10/13
