Newspaper boss held in CAR

2008-01-14 15:20

Bangui - Police in the Central African Republic have arrested the managing editor of a newsweekly, Faustin Bambou, over an article where he accused government members of taking bribes, says his lawyer.

Bambou, who ran Les Collines de l'Oubangui (The Oubangui Hills), was picked up on Friday and placed in custody in Bangui's central gendarmerie on the orders of the capital's chief prosecutor, lawyer Jean-Hilaire Zoumalde said.

Zoumalde said: "The ministers named in the article complained to the High Council of Communications. They didn't file any suit against the journalist to have him arrested and detained."

In the contentious article, Les Collines reported that two government ministers were paid several billion CFA francs by the French nuclear power group, Areva, which in July bought into a uranium deposit at Bakouma in the northeast of the poverty-stricken country.

Public disorder

The prosecutor at the Bangui court, Firmin Feindiro, said that no case had yet been presented against Bambou and that he "hasn't been charged, at least not for now".

Feindiro added: "The enquiry is still under way, but the complaints levelled against him are serious enough. This is about inciting public disorder and an uprising against the country's institutions."

A legal source who asked not to be named said that the publication of the article had encouraged the landlocked nation's civil servants to extend until January 17 a pay strike they began at the start of the year.

The government workers had been demanding the payment of several months of salary arrears - a frequent occurrence in the Central African Republic, where successive governments had faced civil unrest and military uprisings triggered in part by their inability to pay wages on time.

- AFP