An appeals court in Burkina Faso on Wednesday confirmed the scrapping of a case against a security official who was the sole suspect in the 1998 murder of journalist Norbert Zongo.
The Ouagadougou court said an appeal against last month’s judiciary decision to drop the case against Marcel Kafando was ”inadmissible”, arguing that ”the examining judge did his work well”, a legal source said.
Zongo’s family, lawyers, and rights activists reacted angrily to the confirmation of the case’s dismissal.
”I am deeply disappointed by this decision,” said Issa Diallo, one of Zongo’s family’s lawyers.
On July 19, Burkina Faso’s judiciary dropped the case against Kafando, a presidential guard member, who was the only suspect to have been charged for killing Zongo.
Zongo, director of the weekly Independent magazine, was found murdered on December 13 1998, along with three of his companions, on a road about 100km south of the capital, Ouagadougou.
An independent investigation ordered by the government concluded that the assassination was linked to the journalist’s professional activities.
Zongo had been investigating the death at the presidential compound of the chauffeur of President Blaise Compaore’s youngest brother. The government-ordered probe identified six ”serious suspects”, but Kafando was the only one ever charged.
The New York-based Centre to Protect Journalists (CPJ) in a statement described Wednesday’s decision as ”outrageous”.
”This ruling will only fuel suspicions of interference in the judicial process, and prolong the reign of impunity for Zongo’s killers,” said CPJ’s Africa programme coordinator, Julia Crawford.
A group of Burkinabe women is wearing black to protest against the dropping of the case as it makes a weekly ”pilgrimage” to the reporter’s grave in protest. — Sapa-AFP