• Text size  | | |
• Email this document
• Printable version

Amnesty International Report 2005 - Niger

Covering events from January - December 2004

More than 230 soldiers, arrested following a failed mutiny in 2002, remained in detention without trial. Journalists continued to be targeted in an attempt to restrict freedom of expression. Slavery remained widespread and unpunished.

Background

In July, the three political parties backing the head of state won local elections. In December, President Mamadou Tandja was re-elected for a second term and his party, the National Movement for the Development of Society (Mouvement national pour la société de développement, MNSD) won the legislative elections.

Detention without trial

In July a military prosecutor announced that more than 230 soldiers arrested after an attempted mutiny in 2002 would be tried by a military court, drawing protests from human rights organizations. However, the soldiers were still in detention without trial at the end of 2004.

Freedom of expression

• In January, Mamane Abou, the editor of Le Républicain, the leading newspaper in Niamey, was released on probation by the court of appeal. He had been sentenced to six months' imprisonment in November 2003 for publishing information critical of government officials.

• In August, Moussa Kaka, a correspondent for Radio France Internationale, was detained for questioning and held for four days after interviewing a suspected rebel who claimed responsibility for an attack in the north of the country.

• In December, police raided premises in Niamey where the private weekly, Le Témoin, was printed. No official explanation for the raid was given but according to the newspaper's management, it may have been in response to the publication of an interview with four soldiers and a gendarme who had been held hostage for three months by an armed opposition group.

Slavery

Hundreds of thousands of people reportedly remained in conditions of slavery despite the adoption of a new Penal Code in 2003 making slavery a punishable crime.