Newspaper editor arrested again, residence permit seized, in continuing harassment

Reporters Without Borders calls for an immediate end to Gambian government harassment of Nigerian journalist Abdullamid Adiamoh, the managing editor of the Banjul-based independent newspaper Today, whose residence permit was confiscated by the police when they arrested him at his home on 11 August and held him for 24 hours. “The Gambian authorities are adept at the most base methods of harassing anyone who gets in their way,” the press freedom organisation said. “Adiamoh is once again the target of pressure that is meant to make his life in Gambia impossible.” Plain-clothes police searched Adiamoh's home on 11 August, confiscated his residence permit and took him to the headquarters of the criminal investigation police in Banjul and questioned him about his status as a foreign resident in Gambia, where he has lived for more than 10 years. He was released the next day. Adiamoh was previously arrested on a sedition charge on 17 July in connection with an article two days before in which he said many children between the ages of 7 and 9 did not go to school and sold scrap metal to survive. A verdict is meanwhile expected today in the cases of freelance journalist Fatou Jaw Manneh, who was arrested by the National Intelligence Agency on her arrival at Banjul international airport on 28 March 2007 on a flight from the United States. She faces a possible three-year prison sentence on charges of intention to commit sedition, publication of seditious words and publication of false news intended to create public fear and alarm. See release of 5 April 2007.