Gambia

Gambian police should stop harassing a journalist over a story highlighting human trafficking in the country, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Tuesday. Sanna Camara, a journalist with The Standard, was Tuesday summoned to police headquarters in the capital Banjul over a June 27 story titled "Police admit 'problems' with human trafficking," Camara told CPJ. The story was based on an...

The Federation of African Journalists (FAJ) today commended the ruling of the ECOWAS Community Court of Justice, sitting in Abuja, Nigeria on 10 June, concerning the case of Deyda Hydara versus The Gambia. According to independent sources, the defendant state produced Captain Lamin K. Saine as their witness. Captain Saine was a senior official at the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) and was...

The Committee to Protect Journalists has welcomed today's ruling by a West African regional court, which found that the Gambian government failed to conduct a meaningful investigation into the murder of journalist Deyda Hydara. The ruling is the first ECOWAS case relating to the murder of a Gambian journalist. Hydara, the founder of the independent newspaper The Point, was shot dead by...

Reporters Without Borders has said that the authorities have delayed the trial of The Voice editor Musa Sheriff and freelance journalist Sainey Marenah on charges of “conspiracy to commit a felony and publication of false news with intent to cause fear and alarm to the public.” They were due to have been tried yesterday but the hearing was postponed until 4 February. “It seems clear that...

Reporters Without Borders has condemned yesterday’s arbitrary arrests of Musa Sheriff, the owner and editor of the Banjul-based tri-weekly newspaper The Voice, and Sainey Marenah, one of his reporters, on a charge of “publishing false information.” They are being held in connection with a report in their paper last month that 19 members of the ruling Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and...

Gambian authorities should drop the charges against two journalists who have been held since Monday on accusations of giving false information, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. State security agents arrested Musa Sheriff, a Liberian citizen and editor of the thrice-weekly independent newspaper The Voice, and Sainey Marenah, a freelance journalist, and charged them under the...

Reporters Without Borders has taken note of a New Year’s Day announcement by the president’s office lifting bans on The Standard newspaper and Teranga FM community radio station. The bans had been in effect for more than 16 months. “This announcement, described as a goodwill gesture by President Yahya Jammeh for the New Year, must not divert attention from all the violations of freedom of...

State security agents on Thursday last ransacked Teranga FM, a community radio station located outside the capital, and ordered its closure, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has learned from various sources. “We condemn such brutal methods and urge the government to explain this incident at once,” RSF said. “We also call for the station to be reopened. Independent...

Musa Saidykhan, who was detained for three weeks in 2006 by Gambian state security agents, was tortured and must receive compensation, a West African regional court ruled on Thursday. Saidykhan, editor-in-chief of the now-banned private biweekly The Independent, was detained for 22 days without charge by the Gambian National Intelligence Agency (NIA) during a brutal government crackdown following...

On the sixth anniversary of leading Gambian journalist Deyda Hydara’s still unsolved murder, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has appealed to the authorities to stop obstructing an independent investigation and urges President Yahya Jammeh to liberalize the country’s media legislation by repealing the laws that were adopted in 2004. Hydara’s murder on December 16...