ACTUALITÉS

 

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F 717 - 20/03/07.

Djibouti court jails rights critic

http://english.aljazeera.net/English

 

A Djibouti criminal court has convicted a human rights activist of defamation, sentencing him to six months in prison and fining him 480 euros.

Jean-Paul Noel Abdi, chairman of the Djibouti League of Human Rights, was found guilty on Sunday of falsely accusing a presidential guard soldier of rape, according to an unnamed judicial source.
Abdi, who is also the Djibouti representative of Amnesty International, said that the verdict "incontestably shows that the state of human rights in Djibouti is more than worrying".
Abdi allegedly accused a member of the personal guard of Ismail Omar Guelleh, Djibouti's president, of raping a girl "without checking his sources or consulting those whose reputations were involved".

The activist was arrested on March 9, and was held in prison before being freed on bail last weekend. At the time of his arrest police did not say why he had been taken into custody.

But the International Federation of Human Rights, to which the Djibouti league is affiliated, said police questioned Abdi over his public stance on a common grave that had been discovered a month earlier at Day, in the north of the country.

The grave "contained the remains of seven civilians allegedly executed on January 1, 1994, by the security forces", AFP reported Florence Geel, the Africa bureau programme co-ordinator for the Paris-based rights group, as saying.