Niger releases detained journalist

Niger has freed an editor-in-chief arrested after his TV news channel aired a programme critical of the ruling junta.

Seyni Amadou, editor-in-chief of private broadcaster Canal 3 TV, was arrested on Saturday, in the latest crackdown on the press since the military took power in a 2023 coup.

His detention came a day after Niger’s communications minister, Sidi Raliou Mohamed, suspended the channel for a month following Canal 3’s broadcast of a story rating the performance of various members of government.

Mohamed also suspended Amadou’s press card for three months.

“Seyni Amadou has just been freed,” said Canal 3 TV’s director general Ismael Abdoulaye.

Abdoulaye had previously said that the communications minister had lifted the channel and Amadou’s reporting suspensions.

Having earlier on Monday called for Amadou’s release, media rights watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) welcomed the lifting of the suspensions, which it had branded “illegal”.

Niger lies 80th out of 180 countries on the 2024 Press Freedom Index published by Paris-based RSF.

Since the army ousted democratically elected president Mohamed Bazoum in 2023, the Sahel country has clamped down on dissent, press freedom and civil society.

In November, another journalist at Canal 3, Serge Mathurin Adou, was detained and later convicted on allegations he attempted to destabilise fellow junta-led Sahel nation Burkina Faso.

The managing director of daily newspaper L’Enqueteur, Idrissa Soumana Maiga, was imprisoned for two months for “undermining national defence,” before obtaining provisional release in July.

And in September and October 2023, journalist Samira Sabou was arrested before being provisionally released and charged with disseminating data likely to disturb public order.

The junta has also blocked international channels including Radio France Internationale (RFI), France 24 and the BBC.