A high-school teacher and a journalist were given jail terms on Tuesday for insulting Mali’s President Amadou Toumani Touré, judicial sources said, in a case that has raised questions over press freedom in that country.
Four other journalists charged with defaming the president were given suspended sentences in the case, which was boycotted by defence lawyers.
High-school teacher Bassirou Kassim Minta was given a two-month sentence for giving his students an essay assignment about an imaginary president’s mistress.
A journalist from the independent daily Info-Matin, Seydina Oumar Diarra, was sentenced to 13 days’ jail for having reported on the essay assignment. The director of his newspaper, Sambi Touré, was given an eight-month suspended sentence.
The editorial directors of three other newspapers that publicised the case were each given four-month suspended jail sentences.
Defence lawyers said earlier on Tuesday they were boycotting the trial in the capital, Bamako, which was held behind closed doors after the judge ordered the courtroom cleared shortly after it began.
”We want to show by our absence that the freedom of the press is being violated in Mali,” said one of the lawyers, Mamadou Gakou.
Security had been stepped up around the courthouse after a strike on Monday by independent newspapers and radio stations to highlight the lack of press freedom.
In the controversial high-school assignment, students were asked to write about an imagined female student and prostitute who battles for recognition of her out-of-wedlock child after being made pregnant by a fictitious president. — Sapa-AFP