Six journalists jailed last month on questionable claims of sedition were pardoned today by President Yahya Jammeh. The Gambian president had faced international condemnation over their sentences.
The six had been sentenced by Nigerian judges, assigned to The Gambia to provide that country's judiciary with "technical assistance."
Femi Falana, president of the West Africa Bar Association, welcomed the pardon. In an interview with Saharareporters, he said his organization had written the Gambian president to condemn the sentencings. In his view, most of the dirty jobs in the Gambian judiciary were perpetrated by Nigerians under the guise of technical assistance to the Gambians. Nigerian judge Emmanuel Fagbenle, for example, carried out the sentencing of journalists on "sedition" charges, a law which had since been pronounced dead in Nigeria since 1983.
The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomed the action to pardon the six. “We are extremely relieved to hear of the six journalists’ freedom,” said CPJ’s Africa Program Coordinator Tom Rhodes. “Now is the time for President Jammeh to turn over a new leaf and assist in identifying the whereabouts of former Daily Observer reporter, Ebrima Manneh who was last seen by eyewitnesses at the paper’s office taken away by security agents over three years ago.”
"The happy ending must not be allowed to eclipse the injustice these six leading journalists suffered," Reporters Without Borders said. "Despite being innocent, they spent a month in prison, far from their families and, in some cases, at a danger to their lives because of poor health."
Reporters Without Borders was told Jammeh's reason for the pardon was to mark the Muslim observance of Ramadan.
The journalists were convicted on charges ranging from defamation to "seditious publication" for issuing a joint statement on behalf of the Gambia Press Union calling on Jammeh to recognize his government's responsibility for journalist Deyda Hydara's death in 2004.
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