A Kenyan newspaper editor was released on bail on Wednesday, two days after being arrested in connection with an article about a high-profile murder investigation.
Three people were meanwhile charged with the murder — that of a senior official in the national conference rewriting Kenya’s constitution.
Sunday Standard Editor David Makali was charged with receiving stolen goods, namely a videotape of police interviews, transcripts of which were splashed on the paper’s front page at the weekend.
Bail was set at 5 000 shillings ($64 dollars). A policeman was also charged with stealing the tape. Neither man was asked to enter a plea.
Makali’s detention and the aggressive questioning of two of his senior newspaper colleagues prompted protests in Kenya from the press and human rights organisations.
The three newspapermen were arrested on Monday, a day after their paper published the transcripts of interrogations of suspects in the murder of the constitutional review official, Crispin Mbai.
Two of the Standard employees were released after a few hours.
According to the transcripts, two suspects told police that a politician in the ruling National Rainbow Coalition (Narc) party had hired them to kill Mbai.
In another court, three men were charged with Mbai’s murder on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, the Union of African Journalists (UAJ) and the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) Kenya Chapter also added voices to the protests against the arrests.
“We protest that it is not the business of the government to interfere in the ways journalists gather and disseminate stories,” the Cairo-based UAJ said in a statement.
“We fear that attempts are being made to force journalists to disclose their souces of information,” UAJ Secretary General George Odiko said.
Odiko demanded that the government “immediately stop what appears to be a designed harassment action against effective journalism in Kenya.”
The ICJ also protested the government’s handling of the issue and stressed that journalists “had a right not to reveal their sources.”
“It is unfortunate that the police were bent on breaching this international standard,” the ICJ said in a statement. – AFP