The Liberian rights group Foundation for Human Rights and Democracy (FOHRD) has expressed alarm at the resurgence of the ’dark days of cowboy justice’, when citizens accused of crimes were first paraded and drilled around and subjected to harassment and intimidation before availing them to the formal judicial process.
“This concern of FOHRD comes in the wake of the recent arrest, detention and subsequent charging with sedition, libel and criminal malevolence of Attorney Syrenius Cephus, publisher of the Plain Truth newspaper and Mr. Michael Makinde, a Nigerian businessman legally operating in Liberia, who is also Manager of SEAMARCO Printing Press,” a statement signed by FOHRD Executive Director, Aloysius Toe said in Monrovia on Saturday.
FOHRD said it views the arrest of Cephus and Makinde as an “attack on press freedom and a poisonous bullet fired in the spinal cord of free expression and freedom of the press, adding, “FOHRD therefore unequivocally condemns, detests and rejects such an action, considering it unacceptable, tyrannical and anti-democratic”.
“It is utterly shameful and unwarranted that a peaceful, law-abiding Nigerian businessman whose only crime is printing a critical story written by an independent newspaper accredited, legally registered and operating in Liberia, would be subjected to such inhumane treatment,” Mr Toe said in the statement.
The publisher of the Plain Truth newspaper, Attorney Cephus and Mr. Makinde, Manager of SEAMARCO Printing Press were arrested last weekend for respectively publishing and printing an article which claimed that the Liberian government was supplying Guinean dissidents arms to oust the military junta. They were arrested and charged with sedition, libel and criminal malevolence.
Source African Press Agency
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