Nigeria / Journalist released after one week in custody
ABUJA, Nigeria, March 27, 2009/African Press Organization (APO)/ — Reporters Without Borders today welcomed the release on 24 March of Akin Orimolade, bureau chief in the central city of Abuja for Lagos-based weekly National Life.
His release came after the governor of Bayelsa state, in southern Nigeria, Timipre Sylva, had charges against him lifted. The worldwide press freedom organisation however condemned the conditions in which he was held for one week, along with common-law criminals.
“Akin Orimolade was the victim of a veritable manhunt. After being chased down and harassed, the journalist was treated like a common thief”, the organisation said. “This case is just the latest incident in a series of daily brutality and intimidation towards the press, in a country where being a journalist has become a high-risk profession”.
Orimolade was arrested in Abuja on 17 March by a group of armed men identified as security agents who lured him into a trap. On the orders of the Governor Sylva, they first took him to a police station in Garki before moving him to Yenagoa, capital of Bayelsa state, more than 500 kilometres south.
He was accused of defamation in connection with an article carried in the weekly’s 31 January 2009 edition, headlined “Governor Sylva Tyson!”, describing a brawl in a hotel between the governor, Timipre Sylva, and the local leader of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Fred Agbedi.
SOURCE : Reporters without Borders (RSF)
