A court in Senegal has sentenced a newspaper publisher to three years in prison for printing “false reports” in an article claiming the president and his son had stolen government funds.
The verdict late Friday found El Malick Seck guilty of “acts likely to disturb the public order and cause serious political disorder, of diffusion of false reports, of public insult and of concealment of administrative documents.”
Seck, publisher of the private 24 Hours Chrono paper, was arrested Aug. 28 after his paper printed an article charging that President Abdoulaye Wade and his son were involved in laundering money stolen from an Ivory Coast bank.
Tensions have been growing in recent months between the press and the government in Senegal, a small primarily Muslim country on the west coast of Africa.
Journalists have held demonstrations and marches charging the government with trying to intimidate reporters and squash negative coverage.
|
