Regional group asked to intercede on behalf of missing journalist

Reporters Without Borders has written to Dr. Mohamed Ibn Chambas, the president of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), asking him to intercede with the Gambian authorities on behalf of a journalist, “Chief” Ebrima Manneh, who has been missing since his arrest in Banjul in July 2006. Last year, an ECOWAS court ordered the Gambian government to free Manneh and pay him compensation, but the government continued to deny holding him. “We urge you to reiterate your appeal to the Gambian authorities, who are required to cooperate with the court by articles 3 and 4 of the ECOWAS founding treaty,” Reporters Without Borders said in its 22 April letter. “Our organisation hopes that your personal involvement will convince the Gambian authorities to finally agree to shed light on Manneh’s fate.” Gambian justice minister Marie Saine Firdaus denied on 6 April that Manneh, a journalist with the privitaly owned Daily observer, had ever been detained in a Gambian prison. But, speaking on condition of anonymity, a police officer employed at Banjul’s Mile Two prison told Agence France-Presse a week later that he last saw Manneh in the prison in 2008, before he was taken away one night by a plain-clothes police officer. There are no reports of Manneh being seen since then and the Mile Two police officer believes he is now dead. In a ruling issued on 5 June 2008, the ECOWAS Court of Justice, which is based in the Nigerian city of Abuja, formally ordered President Yahya Jammeh’s government to release Manneh and pay him 100,000 dollars in damages, but the government refused to cooperate. Manneh has been missing ever since his arrest by members of the National Intelligence Agency on 7 July 2006, a few days after an African Union summit in Banjul. The reason for his arrest never came to light and the Gambian government has always refused to provide any information about what has happened to him. Several credible sources said he was being held in a provincial police station in January 2007 and then in Banjul’s Mile Two prison in July 2007, before being transferred to a hospital.