Police say the arrest of journalist, David Tam-Baryoh of the Monologue radio programme fame was ordered by President Ernest Bai Koroma under the country’s emergency regulations currently in force.
Director of the police criminal investigations department, Chief Superintendent Ibrahim Koroma told Politico that Tam-Baryoh’s arrest followed “an Executive Order signed by His Excellency the president.”
He said the detention of the journalist was “indefinite until it pleases His Excellency” to grant his release.
It is not immediately clear what the journalist could have done to warrant his arrest, but it followed a programme he did on Saturday which was rather strangely not repeated on Sunday.
The Sierra Leone Association of Journalists has criticized the arrest. SLAJ Secretary General, Moses Kargbo says the timing – at night – was inappropriate. He condemned the arrest of journalists “under orders from above”.
This is the second time Tam-Baryoh has been arrested this year. In January he was taken in by the police under criminal and seditious libel law provisions involving transport minister Leonard Balogun Koroma. And in July his radio programme was temporarily banned on the orders of cabinet.
© Politico 04/11/14
