Imprisoned FrontPage Africa Managing Editor Rodney Sieh was admitted to hospital in Monrovia after his health deteriorated. Sieh is in prison over libel damages worth US$1.5 million that he cannot afford to pay.
Imprisoned FrontPage Africa Managing Editor, Rodney Sieh, has been admitted to the JFK Medical Center in Monrovia. Sieh was rushed to the hospital by prison guards and some officers of the United Nations Mission in Liberia at midnight on 27 August 2013 as his health deteriorated. This information was confirmed by Cllr. Pearl Brown Bull, one of Sieh’s legal representatives.
A member of the FrontPage Africa team rushed to the hospital after being told that Sieh had been taken there. The team member said the prison authorities alleged that Sieh had complained of a fever and was shivering from being cold as a result of the temperature in the prison.
The Managing Editor of the FrontPage Africa newspaper has spent seven nights in jail following his incarceration by the civil law court of the Temple of Justice on Thursday, 22 August 2013. FrontPageAfrica offices in Congo Town were closed on Friday, 23 August 2013 by the sheriff from the Sixth Judicial Circuit court in Monrovia, and its online edition has also been ordered closed.
Sieh has vowed to remain in jail and averred that no amount of pressure from anyone or the state apparatus will persuade him to renege his fight for social justice and transparency in Liberia.
He has maintained that he does not trust the judicial system before his arrest and subsequent closure of the newspaper. “We are in the process of bracing ourselves for the worst,” Sieh noted.
