Mauritanian journalist jailed -- for protesting Israel
Publisher of Arabic-Language Weekly Charged With 'Libel And Insult'
Reporters sans Frontières (Paris)
PRESS RELEASE
17 June 2008
Posted to the web 18 June 2008
Mohamed Nema Oumar, the publisher of the privately-owned, Arabic-language weekly "Al-Houriya", was released on the evening of 13 June 2008 after being held for 30 hours in a police station in the Nouakchott district of Tevragh Zeina.
He was charged two days later with "libel and insult" and was ordered to report to the police twice a week pending trial, Nouakchott bar president Ahmed Ould Youssouf said. His passport has been confiscated and he is banned from leaving the country for two months.
Oumar was arrested on 12 June as he left the VIP lounge at Nouakchott international airport after accompanying the president on an official visit to Libya, for which he was accredited as press representative. Three plain-clothes police with an arrest warrant took him in an unmarked car to a police station in the Nouakchott district of Tevragh Zeina. The Mauritanian Press Association (RPM), a local group that represents the independent media, had called for a sit-in outside the police station.
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Reporters sans Frontières (Paris)
PRESS RELEASE
17 June 2008
Posted to the web 18 June 2008
Mohamed Nema Oumar, the publisher of the privately-owned, Arabic-language weekly "Al-Houriya", was released on the evening of 13 June 2008 after being held for 30 hours in a police station in the Nouakchott district of Tevragh Zeina.
He was charged two days later with "libel and insult" and was ordered to report to the police twice a week pending trial, Nouakchott bar president Ahmed Ould Youssouf said. His passport has been confiscated and he is banned from leaving the country for two months.
Oumar was arrested on 12 June as he left the VIP lounge at Nouakchott international airport after accompanying the president on an official visit to Libya, for which he was accredited as press representative. Three plain-clothes police with an arrest warrant took him in an unmarked car to a police station in the Nouakchott district of Tevragh Zeina. The Mauritanian Press Association (RPM), a local group that represents the independent media, had called for a sit-in outside the police station.
--MORE--