South Sudanese Police Detain Editor Without Charge

{{South Sudan’s police have detained a newspaper editor without charge and refused him access to a lawyer for three days.}}

Rights groups frequently accuse security forces of harassing and illegally detaining journalists in South Sudan, which gained independence from Sudan almost two years ago after more than two decades of civil war.

Michael Koma, managing editor at the Juba Monitor, said he was arrested on Thursday and was being held in lieu of the chief editor, Alfred Taban, who was in Kenya.

“They’re holding me here illegally on the behalf of Alfred,” Koma told media from behind bars in his police cell in the capital Juba, which he shared with four other men.

Koma said he was arrested after his newspaper printed a statement by the ethnic Nuer community accusing the deputy interior minister of involvement in the murder of a traffic policeman in late March.

Koma said the article ran under his byline, and he did not seek comment from deputy interior minister Salva Mathok Gengdit.

The interior ministry and police were not immediately available for comment, but Gengdit has strongly denied the charges in the local press.

“There’s no access to toilet facilities, only a plastic bottle,” Koma said when police let a journalist visit him in his cell. Officers later confiscated the reporter’s pad containing notes from the interview.

{reuters}