Journalist faces prison for criticising slowness of courts

Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières - RSF) expressed concern today about the prosecution of journalist Saada Allao, of the Lebanese daily As Safir, for writing articles criticising the country's legal system and demanded that action against her be dropped. "Why is this journalist facing three years in prison when she simply did her job by pointing out how the legal system was not working?" said RSF secretary-general Robert Ménard in a letter to Lebanese justice minister Samir El-Jisr. Allao appeared before the press court on 8 April accused of "disrespect towards the courts and making insinuations about a case being tried," following a complaint by the chief state prosecutor. In a series of articles last November, Allao investigated the disappearance of a girl in Beirut during the 1990s soon after her family had put her in a convent. In one of the articles, published on 14 November, the girl's mother said nothing had been done since she filed a complaint several years earlier about her disappearance and that court officials had told her the case documents had been lost. The station Future TV, which did a report on the situation last July, also quoting the girl's mother, is not being prosecuted. Allao, who faces three years in prison or a fine of 20 million Lebanese pounds (about 13,500 euros), will appear in court again on 20 May.