(RSF/IFEX) – The following is an RSF press release: Lucien Messan released, another journalist transferred to Lomé prison Reporters sans frontières (RSF) welcomes the release of Lucien Messan, editorial director of the weekly Le Combat du Peuple. The journalist was pardoned by the head of state on the evening of 28 October 2001. He had […]
(RSF/IFEX) – The following is an RSF press release:
Lucien Messan released, another journalist transferred to Lomé prison
Reporters sans frontières (RSF) welcomes the release of Lucien Messan, editorial director of the weekly Le Combat du Peuple. The journalist was pardoned by the head of state on the evening of 28 October 2001. He had been detained since 23 May at the civil prison in Lomé. In a telephone conversation with RSF, Lucien Messan stated that the time he spent in prison “had not changed anything” and that he would be going back to work.He also denounced the conditions under which he was detained, saying, “We were 1,200 prisoners in a 60 square metre courtyard. If you don’t have any money, you die. It was horrible. I didn’t receive any visitors for over one month.”
RSF is asking the authorities to release Alphonse Klu, who is the last imprisoned journalist in the country. On 26 October, the director of Le Nouvel Echo was transferred to the civil prison in Lomé. Two weeks earlier, having been summoned, he went to the offices of the Ministry of the Interior. He was immediately placed in police custody at the Lomé police station. The police is demanding that he reveal his sources for an article in which he reported that a government official is allegedly hiding “several billion” CFA Francs in his basement.
On 5 June 2001, the Fourth Correctional Chamber of Lomé’s Court of First Instance sentenced Lucien Messan to eighteen months’ imprisonment with six months suspended for “falsehood and the use of falsehood.” In reality, he was accused of having signed a press release of the Togolese Private Press Editors Association (Association togolaise des éditeurs de la presse privée, ATEPP) though he is not a director of the publication. Only his son, Messan S. Junior, director of Le Combat du Peuple, is authorised to sign ATEPP documents. The press release denounced the following statement from the Togolese prime minister: “The publication directors unanimously denied that hundreds of people were ever killed in Togo.” The ATEPP accused the government of “trying to use the private press.”
Lucien Messan’s arrest was orchestrated by the minister of the interior, General Sizing Walla. He ordered that legal proceedings be launched against the journalist. In August 2000, the journalist filed a complaint against the minister of the interior for “abuse of power,” following repeated seizures of copies of Le Combat du Peuple.
Lucien Messan, aged 55, is the dean of the Togolese private press. He is known as a journalist who is very critical of Gnassingbé Eyadéma’s regime. He was previously arrested in September 1998 and accused of “distribution of false news.”
