(RSF/IFEX) – Hassan Bility, editor-in-chief of the privately-owned weekly newspaper “The Analyst”, who is accused of plotting with anti-government rebels to kill President Charles Taylor, has been missing since 1 July 2002. Bility was arrested on 24 June along with two other persons. RSF is very concerned about the journalist’s situation. The organisation has asked […]
(RSF/IFEX) – Hassan Bility, editor-in-chief of the privately-owned weekly newspaper “The Analyst”, who is accused of plotting with anti-government rebels to kill President Charles Taylor, has been missing since 1 July 2002. Bility was arrested on 24 June along with two other persons.
RSF is very concerned about the journalist’s situation. The organisation has asked the chairman of the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, Diego Garcia-Sayan, to “intervene urgently” with the Liberian government. “We fear that Bility, a fierce critic of President Taylor, may have died under torture,” RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard said in a letter to Garcia-Sayan.
On 28 June, the organisation asked Liberian Information Minister Reginald Goodridge to either provide speedy proof of the accusations against Bility or release him. “We hope the allegation of plotting to kill the president is not just an excuse to gag a journalist who has been harshly critical of the government,” Ménard said. The authorities have not responded to RSF’s letter.
The National Human Rights Centre of Liberia (NHRC), a group of local bodies, had asked the government to present the three arrested persons to them, either dead or alive, under the habeas corpus law. The three persons (two of whom have not been identified) were not brought before a Monrovia court on 1 and 2 July, as the NHRC had also requested. On 2 July, the Public Prosecutor’s Office said the three persons were no longer in government hands.
Shortly after the 24 June arrests, Goodridge said that Bility was being held at National Security Agency offices in Monrovia because he was “a central figure” among “those who have been running cells in Monrovia actively collaborating with LURD terrorists and their supporters in the United States,” with the aim of assassinating President Taylor.
The authorities said they had found several e-mail messages sent or received by Bility that proved he had links with the rebels. A spokesman for the rebel group LURD (Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy) outside the country said Bility was “not a member of LURD, nor even a sympathiser,” and was in fact very critical of the group.
RSF recalls that in February, four journalists from “The Analyst” were arrested for 24 hours because of several articles which, according to the authorities, were “not out for peace” and “poisoned the minds of the people.” In addition, police searched the newspaper’s offices on 26 April and ordered it to be closed down (see IFEX alerts of 29 April, 22 and 13 February 2002). The president personally authorised the newspaper’s return to the newsstands a month later.
