/ 6 June 1999

DETAINED JOURNALISTS FREED

FOUR of five Ivorian newspaper journalists who were detained for more than a month for allegedly disrupting public order and offending the head of state were freed from an Abidjan detention centre on Thursday. Le Populaire managing editor Raphael Lakpe was arrested on April 28 after a riot in Abidjan allegedly sparked by a story in his newspaper concerning the death of a student. A few days later, four of his colleagues, Bamba Idrissa, Mohamed Ouattara, Shran Haisy and Yves Abiet, were arrested for offending the head of state, Henri Konan Bedie.