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Reporters Without Borders is outraged by the re-admission to Monrovia central prison today of the journalist Rodney Sieh, after 22 days in the John F. Kennedy Memorial Hospital.
"The harassment of this journalist by the Liberian legal system is totally underserved and we call for his immediate release," the press freedom organization said.
"Rodney Sieh was only carrying out his job as a journalist. We call once again on the government to take action to decriminalise media offences, in particular to stop imposing disproportionate fines on journalists in order to intimidate them, since the media play an important role in the fight against corruption."
Sieh was imprisoned on 20 August for refusing to pay a fine of nearly 1.6 million dollars in libel damages in a case brought by the former agriculture minister, Chris Toe.
Since then, Toe has told the media he would drop the case if the journalist apologised publicly.
Sieh's lawyers say their client will not consider such an apology since the articles that appeared in his newspaper Frontpage Africa were based on extracts of official reports by the General Auditing Commission, the country's anti-corruption body.
Photo: The editor of the daily Frontpage Africa, Rodney Sieh (center).
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