S Leone probes journo's death
2005-08-05 09:38
Freetown - The Sierra Leone government has agreed to an autopsy on the body of a journalist who died last week, two months after being beaten up by a gang, the country's journalists association said on Thursday.
Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders has accused a deputy of the ruling Sierra Leone People's Party of ordering the attack on Harry Yansaneh for reporting negative comments about the government.
"The government of Sierra Leone has agreed to hold a coroner's inquest," said the association's president Ibrahim Ben Kargbo.
Yansaneh, interim editor of the independent newspaper For Di People, died on July 28, two months after he was attacked by a gang.
Demanding justice
The daily's regular editor, Paul Kamara, has been in prison since October last year for "seditious defamation" after comments found objectionable by President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah.
In a statement last weekend, Reporters Without Borders accused Sierra Leone People's Party deputy Fatmata Hassan Komeh of ordering the attack on Yansaneh.
Komeh, who has not commented since the attack was linked to her, has been appointed as a member of parliament to the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas), the main regional grouping of states.
Kargbo said the association would also "demand that the alleged perpetrators (of the alleged beating) who have now fled the country be extradited to face justice".
Four major diplomatic missions in Sierra Leone - the British, German, European Union and the United States - have called for an inquiry into the beating.