(RSF/IFEX) – In a 15 May 2000 letter to Minister of Justice Solomon Berewa, RSF protested the arrest of Abdul Kuyuteh, acting editor of the private weekly “Wisdom Newspaper”, urging him to do everything in his power to secure the journalist’s immediate release. RSF reminded him that in a document dated 14 July 1992, the […]
(RSF/IFEX) – In a 15 May 2000 letter to Minister of Justice Solomon Berewa, RSF protested the arrest of Abdul Kuyuteh, acting editor of the private weekly “Wisdom Newspaper”, urging him to do everything in his power to secure the journalist’s immediate release. RSF reminded him that in a document dated 14 July 1992, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights stressed that “detention as punishment for the expression of an opinion is one of the most reprehensible means to enjoin silence, and as such constitutes a serious violation of human rights”. “Furthermore, the journalist has been detained for four days, even though the legal limit for preventive detention is forty-eight hours in Sierra Leone,” added RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard.
According to the information collected by RSF, Kuyuteh was arrested at his office in Freetown on the morning of 11 May by police officers from the Criminal Investigation Department, and was taken to a police cell. The arrest was in connection with a story he investigated in December 1999, about the supposed hiring of mercenaries by the government and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF).
RSF also recalled that on 8 May, Saoman Conteh, a reporter with the private weekly “New Tablet”, was killed by RUF members outside the home of Foday Sankoh, vice-president of Sierra Leone and RUF leader (see IFEX alert of 12 May 2000).
