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Alert

Three "La Tribune" journalists detained over story on police violence

(MFWA/IFEX) - Three journalists from "La Tribune", a newly established privately-owned daily newspaper, were on September 25, 2011 released after being detained overnight at the headquarters of the Criminal Investigations Department of the Senegalese police.

The Media Foundation for West Africa's (MFWA) correspondent reported that managing editor Félix Zalé, reporter Ahmet Bachir Ndiáye and photojournalist Mamadou Diop were accused of discrediting the police over a September 23 front-page story and its accompanying photographs that accused the police of using heavy-handed measures in the quelling of a demonstration.

In June 2011, hundreds of Senegalese demonstrated against a bill introduced by President Abdoulaye Wade to amend the country's constitution to facilitate his entrenchment in power. The offending article had the headline, "Beware: Police shoot the people, hundreds go missing".

According to the police, the photographs published by the newspaper were fake. However, the journalists attest that these pictures were genuine and that the word 'missing' was used figuratively because it had to do with people whose files had disappeared from the civil registry.