A Bujumbura court has acquitted Jean-Claude Kavumbagu, the editor of the Net Press news website, of defaming President Pierre Nkurunziza, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. He had been held since September 11 last in pre-trial detention in Mpimba central prison as a result of a complaint brought by the government secretary-general.
The complaint was prompted by a report claiming that the president spent 100 million Burundian francs (71,000 euros) during his visit to Beijing for the Olympic Games opening ceremony whereas the office of the government secretary-general insisted he was given only 50 million for the trip.
Kavumbagu was acquitted on March 18, according to delayed reports.
Kavumbagu was arrested and transferred to Mpimba prison after responding to a second summons from the prosecutor’s office in the capital. When he was first summoned in august 2008, he was notified that the secretary-general of the government had brought a complaint accusing him of libel and “insulting comments.”
The complaint was prompted by an article accusing President Pierre Nkurunziza of spending 100 million Burundian francs (71,000 euros) during his visit to Beijing for the Olympic Games opening ceremony whereas the government had given him only 50 million for the trip. The article claimed that this had delayed the payment of salaries to civil servants.
Net Press is often critical of the ruling CNDD-FDD alliance, which won the August 2005 presidential election. Kavumbagu was arrested several times under the previous government, in 2001 and 2003, and his website was suspended by the media regulatory body in 2005.
His latest arrest came at a time of growing hostility among the president’s supporters towards human rights organisations and certain local journalists and privately-owned media, which a pro-government website recently accused of being “children of the dictatorship” concerned solely with “defending what they have gained.”
Four leading Bujumbura journalists were arrested in November 2006 for reporting that an attack on the presidential palace and the home of the head of the ruling party had in fact been prepared by the army with the aim of proving there had been a coup attempt, the reality of which had been questioned by many privately-owned media. The four journalists were held for more than two months.
