Sierra Leone's Attorney-General and Justice Minister has declared null and void, the conclusion of an inquest into the death of journalist Harry Hasan Yansaneh, on grounds that the investigation panel did not follow the law.
Yansanneh, acting editor of the For Di People newspaper, had been assaulted on May 10, 2005 by thugs allegedly acting on the orders of ruling party parliamentarian Fatmata Hassan Komeh. He died in a freetown hospital on July 28 of kidney failure, according to an autopsy. Yansaneh alleged that Hassan had ordered the attack
The inquest, ordered by government last August, had implicated Hassan, of the ruling Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP), and five others, in the death.
Attorney-General and Justice Minister Frederick Carew said in a statement at the weekend, his office had come to the conclusion that there was no evidence to support the prosecution of the MP and the five others based the report of the inquest.
He said the inquest conducted by "Senior Magistrate Adrian Fisher, who served as coroner did not follow the rules laid down in the law," and "I regret to inform you that up to date, my office has not received any report pertaining to the said inquest as required by law." Carew said his office was "therefore obliged to resort to the record of evidence of complaint in the police file."
President of the Sierra Leone Association of Journalists (SLAJ), Ibrahim B Kargbo, vowed to pursue the matter until such time as the coroner’s report was produced from wherever it was right now. Kargbo said if indeed the coroner’s inquest was bungled by Fisher, it is not the fault of journalists but that of the state machinery which had appointed Fisher in the first place.
"As journalists, we find it difficult to understand why the Attorney-General would at this stage disallow the due process of the law to take its course on the pretext that the Coroner failed to follow the prescribed rules," a press release issued by the SLAJ Secretariat stated. It also pointed out in unequivocal terms that, "We cannot under all circumstances accept the decision of the Attorney General and we will continue to pursue this matter, no matter how long it takes until justice is achieved."
According to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF), Fatmata Hassan Komeh, a member of parliament for the ruling SLPP, on May 10, 2005 ordered her henchmen, some of them her family members, to beat up Yansaneh, for reporting negative comments about the government. Her two sons, accompanied by three other men, burst into the editorial office and beat the journalist, drove staff out of their offices, blocked access to the paper and vandalised equipment. Yansaneh was left with his body and face swollen from his beating. A complaint was made to the police but they have so far taken no action. Some sources said that several of the assailants had since left the country.
On the same day as the attack on Yansaneh, Komeh forced six independent newspapers &ndash The Independent Observer, For Di People, The African Champion, The Progress, The Pool and The Pioneer – to leave the offices that they had been renting for more than ten years.
Local journalists had told the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) that the attack might have been motivated by the newspaper's criticism of the SLPP and the government. Yansaneh had taken over as senior editor following the imprisonment of For Di People's editor and publisher, Paul Kamara, in October 2004. Kamara was convicted of "seditious libel" and sentenced to two years in jail for articles that criticised President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah.
