The regional bimonthly Tribune d’Afrique’s appeal hearing opened Thursday in Lomé but was immediately adjourned at the request of the lawyers representing Mey Gnassingbé, the president’s half-brother and a member of the president’s office, who brought a successful libel suit against the publication last year.
Accepting the claims of Mey Gnassingbé’s lawyers that they had not had enough time to prepare their case, the court ordered an adjournment until April 14, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF).
“Mey Gnassingbé’s lawyers are just stalling in order to win more time and meanwhile the magazine continues to be banned in Togo,” said RSF and Avocats Sans Frontières, which are providing Tribune d’Afrique with moral and legal support.
The two NGOs call on the Togolese authorities to lift the ban provisionally pending the next hearing in two months’ time.
The article that prompted the huge damages award and fine on charges of libel and dissemination of false information was headlined “Drug-trafficking at the top. Togo involved. Mey Gnassingbé named.”
After Tribune d’Afrique filed its appeal, the authorities allowed it to continue to be distributed in Togo. But after two more issues that continued to upset the Togolese authorities, the magazine was notified in mid-September that implementation of the distribution ban would no longer be suspended pending the outcome of the appeal. It has not been distributed in Togo since then.
The sanctions were imposed on Tribune d’Afrique at a time when many print media were being prosecuted in Togo, prompting RSF to write to President Faure Gnassingbé in September protesting again “the abusive use of legal actions against the media.” Thereafter, all the other prosecutions were dropped, leaving Tribune d’Afrique as the only one subject to sanctions.
Regarded as a critic of the government, Tribune d’Afrique has often been targeted by the Togolese authorities in recent years. After it published an exclusive report about the president’s weekend palace in Agou, 100 km outside Lomé, in August 2009, the High Authority for Broadcasting and Communication (HAAC) ordered it to “stop hounding Togo.” Thereafter, the magazine received around 20 summonses from the HAAC without sanctions ever being imposed.
Tribune d’Afrique is distributed in seven of the eight countries that make up the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU): Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, Niger, Togo and (intermittently) Senegal.
