A court in Chadian capital N’Djamena on Thursday found the privately owned weekly La Voix “not guilty” of charges against it and lifted a provisional order for automatic seizure of all copies of the paper made on December 3, 2009, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. An appeal will be heard on January 13.
“We are already preparing our next issue and we think we should be able to publish again from January 12," the editor, Eloi Miandadji, told Paris-based RSF. “We also have high hopes for a decision in our favour on appeal”.
The lower court discharged the case “for reasons of ineligibility”. The newspaper’s lawyer, Jean-Bernard Padaré, told Agence France-Presse (AFP), “It is a victory for the law and the proof that La Voix is legally constituted.”
“The hounding of La Voix had, with the seizure of copies of the paper but above all the abduction of its editor [Innocent Ebodé] and its accountant, taken on unacceptable and disturbing proportions,” the organisation said. “We welcome with great relief a ruling that finally puts right an injustice," it added.
