By Pap Saine
Banjul - Gambian security forces detained two foreign journalists after they published just one edition of a new newspaper, security sources said on Monday, in the latest detention of reporters in the tiny West African state.
Sam Obi, director of The Daily Express and correspondent for Radio France International's English language station, and Abdou Gafari, a reporter on the paper, were detained by the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) at the weekend, security sources said.
The pair, both Nigerians, brought out the The Daily Express in Gambia on July 1, but have yet to bring out a second edition.
The NIA has been involved in a string of detentions of journalists working in Gambia which New York-based international press freedom watchdog the Committee to Protect Journalists has denounced as a "brutal and arbitrary repression of the media".
Most have been released within or shortly after the 72-hour deadline after which Gambian regulations demand police must bring charges, although some have been held without charge for much longer periods, in one case for more than two months.
Madi Ceesay, president of the Gambian Press Union, confirmed Obi and Gafari's arrests, which he linked to a simmering dispute over the banning of a civil society meeting to discuss freedom of expression last month during an African Union (AU) summit.
"They were arrested in connection with an article concerning reaction of the civil society organisations on the refusal of the Gambian authorities to hold their forum on freedom of expression which was scheduled for the 28 and 29 of last month," Ceesay said.
But security sources linked the detentions to a dispute within Gambia's significant community of Ghanaian nationals, based largely in a fishing village known as Ghana Town and who number several thousand in a country of just 1.5 million people.
The Daily Express reported some Ghanaian nationals opposed any welcome for Ghana's President John Kufuor at the AU summit held earlier this month, arguing their government had done too little to investigate the discovery last year of around 10 bodies of people believed to come from Ghana Town, during a round-up of illegal migrants.
The pro-government Daily Observer has since carried a strongly worded response from members of the Ghanaian community denying there was any opposition to welcoming Kufuor, and accusing those who reported otherwise of trying to sow discord and instability among their community.