Gambia charges US-based journalist with sedition

A Gambian court handed down criminal charges to a US-based journalist detained since last week by state intelligence agents, and released her on bail in connection with critical commentary of President Yahya Jammeh, according to local journalists.

Political commentator Fatou Jaw Manneh of the US-based opposition news website All-Gambian.net was charged with three counts of sedition under Gambia’s Criminal Code, defence lawyer Lamin Jobateh told the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

“Jammeh is tearing our beloved country in shreds...He is a bundle of terror...Gambians are desperately in need of an alternative to this egoistic frosty imam...,” Fatou Jaw Manneh was quoted as saying in the Independent newspaper. The interview was later published on several websites, including All-Gambian.net.

Each count carries a prison term of two years, a fine, or both, Jobateh said. Manneh was released Wednesday on bail of 25,000 dalasis (US$950) by a court in Kanifing near capital Banjul, but was ordered to surrender her travel documents. The trial has been adjourned to April 11.

Earlier, Jobateh applied for the court to strike out the case, saying “no court in the Gambia has the jurisdiction to hear the case”. According to him, the alleged offence was not committed within the country. Jobateh then referred the court to Section 52 (a),52 (c) and 59 (1) of the Criminal Procedure Code to back his argument, Banjul-based Daily Observer reported.

The charges were linked to a June 2004 interview given to the now-defunct private bi-weekly the Independent in which Manneh severely criticised Jammeh and his government, according to CPJ. “Jammeh is tearing our beloved country in shreds...He is a bundle of terror...Gambians are desperately in need of an alternative to this egoistic frosty imam...,” she was quoted as saying. The interview was later published on several websites, including All-Gambian.net.

Manneh, who is in her late 30s, worked on Gambia’s pro-government Daily Observer newspaper in the late 1990s before going to study in the United States. Now living in Washington DC, she has written stories for opposition websites critical of Jammeh’s government. Manneh was returning to the Gambia to attend the funeral of her father when she was arrested at the airport, local journalists told CPJ.

Gambian authorities periodically detain journalists who criticise Jammeh, a former coup leader who said after his re-election last year he would ban any newspaper that offended him, a Reuters report remarked.

“Fatou Jaw Manneh’s week-long detention without charge violated her basic due process rights under Gambian laws. Now these charges criminalize a commentator for expressing her views on issues of public interest,” said CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon. “We call on the authorities to drop these charges.”

"If I want to ban any newspaper, I will with good reason," President Yahya Jammeh once said in response to questions concerning press closures and arrests. "This is Africa and this is Gambia, a country where we have very strong African moral values.....If you write, 'Yahya Jammeh is a thief,' you should be ready to prove it in a court of law. If that constitutes lack of press freedom, then I don't care."

The ruling came two days after a group of local journalists, led by award-winning President of the Gambia Press Union Madi Ceesay, visited the offices of Gambia’s National Intelligence Agency (NIA) where Manneh was being held, according to news reports and local journalists. NIA is under direct command of the President.

Meanwhile, the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) has said that even a year after the government illegally shut down the bi-weekly paper Independent, the paper still has not been allowed to resume publication — a sign of the increase in rights violations in the country.

On March 28, 2006, a week after the government announced a foiled coup, Gambian security forces sealed the newspaper’s offices and arrested all its staff. The general manager and editor were tortured in custody before being released without charge three weeks later. Reporter Lamin Fatty, who was arrested in April 2006 and held incommunicado for two months, was also tortured before being charged with publishing “false information”.

Plainclothes police are now permanently stationed on the newspaper’s premises. According to MFWA, the Independent was the only newspaper critical of the government in the country at the time of the coup. Another dissident newspaper, the Point, was silenced when Deyda Hydara, its editor, was brutally murdered in December 2004. Nobody has been charged with his killing.

MFWA says incidents of journalist harassment increased in 2006 — an election year — and show no sign of waning. According to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF), journalists for Gambia’s privately-owned media live in fear, with death threats, surveillance, night-time arrests, arbitrary detention and mistreatment being the norm for journalists who refuse to support the government.

Deyda Hydara shot by one or several persons as he left his office shortly after midnight December 17, 2004. Two of his newspaper’s employees who were with him were injured in the shooting. Hydara, 58, was the managing editor and co-owner of the independent weekly the Point, and had been the local correspondent of Agence France-Presse (AFP) since 1974.

In a notorious case, “Chief” Ebrima Manneh, a reporter with the pro-government Daily Observer, has been missing since July 2006 after allegedly passing on “damaging” information to a foreign journalist at the African Union Heads of State summit a week prior. He is believed to be in police custody, although the police have denied ever arresting him, says MFWA.

The government has also recently turned to the courts to launch cases against journalists, report MFWA and the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ). Foroyaa newspaper is currently being sued for libel by the head of a government company for publishing a story about the company’s “mal-administration” last year.

MFWA is campaigning for their release of Modou Sonko, a worker in the printing department of the Daily Observer, and Isaac Success, a production assistant of the private newspaper Daily Express. They were detained on March 3 by NIA on charges that they misused Daily Observer equipment.