(RSF/IFEX) – On 4 June 2005, Ngaradoumbé Samory, a journalist with the privately-owned weekly “L’Observateur”, was arrested following the publication of an open letter to President Idriss Deby. Samory was arrested by the National Security Agency (Agence nationale de sécurité, ANS), Chad’s counter-espionage service, and held for questioning. His arrest followed the 1 June publication […]
(RSF/IFEX) – On 4 June 2005, Ngaradoumbé Samory, a journalist with the privately-owned weekly “L’Observateur”, was arrested following the publication of an open letter to President Idriss Deby.
Samory was arrested by the National Security Agency (Agence nationale de sécurité, ANS), Chad’s counter-espionage service, and held for questioning. His arrest followed the 1 June publication by “L’Observateur” of an open letter from the Kreda community to President Deby denouncing the arrest of several community members and demanding their immediate release. ANS agents went to the newspaper’s editorial offices at midday and arrested the journalist in charge of coordinating that day’s work.
Summoned by telephone, the newspaper’s publication director, Sy Koumbo Sin Gagali, went to the premises of the ANS to demand Samory’s release. ANS agents demanded to know the name of the letter’s author, otherwise they said the journalist would be kept in detention and charged. After refusing to give into this blackmail, Samory was transferred to the judicial police on 5 June. He was released the following day around noon. “I am releasing your colleague, you will leave with him,” declared Public Security and Immigration Minister Abdramane Moussa as he handed the journalist over to his publication director in the presence of the press and human rights organisations. The minister did not, however, rule out subsequent legal proceedings.
On 6 June, the people of Chad were to vote in a referendum on a controversial constitutional reform that would permit President Deby, who has been in power for 15 years, to seek a new mandate in 2006.
