(RSF/IFEX) – On 27 February 2003, Ismaël Mbonigaba, editor of the newspaper “Umuseso”, was released temporarily. He had been incarcerated at Kigali’s central prison for over one month. RSF has asked the authorities to return the reporter’s passport to him and allow him to travel freely outside the Kigali area. That same day, Public Prosecutor […]
(RSF/IFEX) – On 27 February 2003, Ismaël Mbonigaba, editor of the newspaper “Umuseso”, was released temporarily. He had been incarcerated at Kigali’s central prison for over one month. RSF has asked the authorities to return the reporter’s passport to him and allow him to travel freely outside the Kigali area.
That same day, Public Prosecutor Gilbert Sebihogo ruled that Mbonigaba’s arrest and detention were improper. However, without the Prosecutor’s Office explicit authorisation, the journalist is confined to Kigali and his passport remains confiscated.
Mbonigaba was accused of “incitement to be divisive and practice discrimination”. RSF previously condemned the journalist’s incarceration and noted that the May 2002 press law banned the preventive detention of journalists except in specific cases, which do not include “incitement to be divisive”.
The editor was picked up after his paper reported on 13 January that former prime minister Faustin Twagiramungu would stand against President Paul Kagame in the next presidential election. The article was accompanied by a caricature of Kagame, represented as King Solomon, holding the hand of a baby representing the Democratic Republican Movement (Mouvement démocratique républicain, MDR, a political party that is part of the ruling coalition) and a sword in his other hand. Two other people were shown tugging at him and pestering him about how to handle the MDR. The caricature suggested that Kagame is the arbiter of the party’s divisions and that he alone can decide its future.
