(MISA/IFEX) – The following is a joint MISA-MFWA alert update: Aboulaye Sey, editor-in-chief of the bi-weekly newspaper “The Independent”, who was picked up on 19 September 2003 and detained incommunicado until 22 September, has alleged that National Intelligence Agency (NIA) personnel threatened to kill him if he continued to publish stories criticising President Yahyah Jammeh’s […]
(MISA/IFEX) – The following is a joint MISA-MFWA alert update:
Aboulaye Sey, editor-in-chief of the bi-weekly newspaper “The Independent”, who was picked up on 19 September 2003 and detained incommunicado until 22 September, has alleged that National Intelligence Agency (NIA) personnel threatened to kill him if he continued to publish stories criticising President Yahyah Jammeh’s government.
Despite earlier denials by NIA officials about knowledge of Sey’s whereabouts, he was in fact incarcerated at the NIA detention centre in Banjul.
According to Sey, he was tortured and forced to sleep on the bare floor in a small mosquito-infested cell. The NIA agents interrogated him about an article in the 19 September issue of “The Independent” entitled “Jammeh under the Microscope”, which was considered to be critical of the president and the government.
BACKGROUND:
On 19 September, Sey was arrested by plainclothes security agents in Banjul, The Gambia’s capital.
In May 2002, the Gambian National Assembly (which has only three members from the opposition) passed into law the widely discredited National Media Commission (NMC) Act, No. 7 of 2002. The act confers wide-ranging powers of sanction and closure on the commission, including the right to register media companies and practitioners, and to penalise, fine, suspend and even imprison journalists (see IFEX alerts of 4 September 2003, 1
August, 7 and 2 May 2002).
No official charge has been brought against Sey.
