Kampala - Uganda on Monday charged eight
managers and editors of a daily newspaper with several offences
including libel and computer misuse and a court ordered them
detained until December 5.
The journalists have been in detention for nearly a week
after police raided the premises of Red Pepper accusing them of
publishing a false story.
Police had said on Nov. 23 that they had preferred several
charges including treason against the journalists. Their lawyer,
Maxma Mutabingwa, said that when they appeared in court for the
first time on Monday, treason was not among the offences read
out to them.
Instead they were charged with several counts of libel,
offensive communication and publication of information
prejudicial to security.
"I think police backed off the treason charge because it was
ridiculous, it was not sustainable at all," he told Reuters.
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The journalists applied for bail but the state prosecutor
said he needed time to respond and court adjourned the
proceedings to Dec. 5.
The raid on the paper followed publication of a story that,
citing unnamed sources, said that Rwanda believed Ugandan
President Yoweri Museveni was plotting to oust its leader, Paul
Kagame.
The paper has a wide readership and often regales its
audience with a surfeit of salacious content about private lives
of political and business officials and celebrities.
In recent years it has moved to include more political
coverage and has some times irked authorities with audacious
headlines on security, diplomacy and power manoeuvres in the
government of President Yoweri Museveni.
Police has kept the media outlet's premises cordoned off. It
has not published the daily since the raid. Computers, phones
and other equipment confiscated during the search have also not
been returned, Mutabingwa said.
Rights groups and journalists have complained of escalating
harassment and intimidation of independent media by security
personnel in the East African country especially as Museveni
faces growing opposition pressure to end his rule.
Local media, including Red Pepper, have reported this month
on tensions between Uganda and neighbouring Rwanda over a range
of economic and security disputes but Uganda's foreign affairs
ministry has dismissed the reports as rumours.