Niamey - Police in Niger have arrested a third journalist in what critics said on Friday is an ongoing clampdown on coverage of the conflict with Tuareg rebels in the north of the country.
Daouda Yacouba, correspondent of the bi-monthly Air-Info magazine, was picked up on Thursday at his home in northern town of Ingal and driven to the gendarmerie in regional capital Agadez, a colleague told AFP.
"We don't know why he was taken into custody," he added, but suggested it could be linked to his coverage of the Tuareg rebellion, which is active in the northern Agadez region.
After his arrest, Yacouba told French-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF): "I keep explaining to the gendarmes that all I did was my work as a journalist and that their accusations are baseless."
RSF and other media rights campaigners protest that Yacouba is the third journalist arrested for coverage of the conflict with Tuaregs in the Agadez region.
Moussa Kaka, a correspondent with Radio France Internationale, was taken into custody on September 26.
Yacouba's editor at Air Info, Ibrahim Manzo, was picked up on October 9 at Niamey airport, as he was about to board a plane for France to attend a training course there. The authorities have not yet said on what grounds he is being held.
Kaka, who has been charged with "complicity in a conspiracy to undermine the authority of the state" faces a possible life sentence.
Investigators have accused him of having links with the rebel Tuareg group, the Movement of the People of Niger for Justice (MNJ).
Dozens of journalists demonstrated last Saturday in the capital Niamey calling for Kaka and Manzo to be freed and protesting at what they said was the muzzling of press since the start of the Tuareg rebellion.
Both RSF and the International Federation of Journalists have called on President Mamadou Tandja to end the crackdown on the media.
The Tuareg rebels of the MNJ have disavowed a peace deal signed in 1995 between the government and Tuareg leaders, saying the government failed to respect its commitments.
On October 6, French journalist Francois Bergeron, who had been held for a month on allegations of links with the rebels, was expelled from Niger.
Since August, Niger has barred foreign journalists and others from the north of the country, citing security reasons, following the new unrest among Tuaregs there.
