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Daily: More directors charged
27/10/2003 16:43 - (SA)
Harare - Zimbabwe police on Monday charged four more directors of the Daily News, an independent newspaper which is highly critical of President Robert Mugabe's government, for publishing without a licence.
The charges against the four came after police on Sunday arrested and similarly charged Washington Sansole, one of the paper's directors in the second city of Bulawayo.
Daily News company secretary and legal adviser Gugulethu Moyo told AFP the four, who include the paper's publisher Samuel Nkomo, were also being charged with "obstructing the course of justice".
The charges follow the return to the newsstands on Saturday of the Daily News six weeks after it was shut down by the authorities.
Rachel Kupara, Michael Mattinson and Brian Mutsau all presented themselves to police early Monday, Moyo told AFP. She denied that they and Nkomo had been in hiding.
Copies of the Daily News were snatched up by an enthusiastic public on Saturday morning. But police later shut down the paper's city offices and briefly detained 18 staff members.
They said they wanted to interview the directors of the paper for publishing without a licence, a day after a court ordered the government to issue it a licence by November 30.
Under Zimbabwe's Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) all publications and journalists must be licensed.
The police insist that the newspaper cannot publish until it actually has its certificate.
The paper, the country's only independent daily, initially refused to apply for a licence under the press law, passed last year, saying it was unconstitutional.
But the Supreme Court ruled that the Daily News was operating illegally and should register.
In a move that provoked an outcry here and abroad, armed police raided the paper's offices in September and shut it down a day after the ruling.
The state-appointed media commission subsequently refused to register the Daily News.
But on Friday another court ordered the Media and Information Commission (MIC) to license it by November 30.
If convicted under AIPPA the directors could each face a fine of Z$200 000 (US$240) or a two-year prison sentence.
The Daily News was founded four years ago as an alternative to its main rivals - the state-run Herald and Chronicle dailies, which toe the official line.
An optimistic headline on Saturday's Daily News screamed: "We're back!".
On Monday the Herald parodied that optimism with a cartoon that showed two Daily News readers commenting: "They mean they are back in police cells."
Meanwhile police Monday released the niece of the Daily News publisher, two days after she was arrested at his Harare home by police who went there in search of her uncle.
Lawyer Andrew Makoni said Tulepi Nkomo, who is not connected with the Daily News, was released after paying a Z$10 000 (US$12) fine for "conduct likely to breach peace".
- SAPA
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