SOD's report gets SOD suspended sentence

Bamako - the prison sentences imposed on 26 June 2007 on five journalists and a schoolteacher on charges of insulting President Amadou Toumani Touré, either directly or as accomplices, in connection with a school essay about an imaginary president's mistress, have been condemned by media rights organisation Reporters Without Borders.

The sentences passed on four of the journalists were suspended. The other journalist received a prison term that matched the time he had already been detained. Only the schoolteacher, who got a longer jail term, was not freed at the end of trial.

"The outcome of this trial was extremely disappointing, even if it resulted in the immediate release of all the journalists," Reporters Without Borders said. "The court saw fit to punish a crime of lese-majesté worthy of another age, while at the same time finding an apparent solution to the crisis."

The organisation added: "This case has damaged relations between the government and media, and has rendered a disservice to press freedom activists by setting a bad example to authoritarian governments, which will be able to argue that even democracies impose jail terms on journalists who supposedly attack the president."

Seydina Oumar Diarra, also known as "SOD," the Info-Matin reporter and author of the offending report, who was arrested on 14 June with schoolteacher Bassirou Kassim Minta, was sentenced to 13 days in prison, the number of days he had spent in pre-trial detention. Minta got two months.

Info-Matin editor Sambi Touré, who was arrested on 20 June like the other four journalists, got an eight-month suspended sentence. The other three editors - Ibrahima Fall of Le Républicain, Alexis Kalambry of Les Echos and Hamèye Cissé of Le Scorpion - who reprinted the original SOD article in a show of solidarity, got three-month suspended sentences.

Minta, the teacher, was also fined 100,000 FCFA (150 euros) and was told he was banned from teaching. The other five defendants were each fined 200,000 FCFA (300 euros). The court barred the public from attending the trial on the grounds that it was a "sex case."

The state prosecutor's grounds for arresting the six defendants was SOD's article, headlined Lycée Nanaïssa Santara: the president's mistress.

Originally published in Info-Martin on 1 June and later reprinted in the other newspapers, it was about the humorous essay subject that Minta gave his final-year literature students - the story of a "female student and economic prostitute" who became pregnant by a fictitious president and fought for her child to be recognised.

Source: RSF