Court discharges journalist over libel charges
Freetown – The Magistrate Court in Kenema has discharged journalist, Sheku Tanga on six counts bordering on criminal and defamatory libel. The court also awarded the defendant Le 1,500,000 in cost. In May last year Tanga carried a report on his Eastern Radio station which stated that the Kenema City Council headquarters was constructed in a substandard manner leading to leakages in the building.
Giving his ruling, Magistrate Komba Kamanda acceded to a no-case submission by defence lawyer Ansu Lansana. He said Albert Leigh, the Chief Executive Officer of Harris Construction Company, had no locus standi to be the plaintiff, saying that as a registered company, he should have only been acting on behalf of his company and not in his personal stead.
Magistrate Komba also faulted the evidence adduced by prosecution saying the journalist’s report was factual in that there were leakages to the building which the company CEO himself admitted to. He said he found nothing defamatory in the radio report and that even if it was exaggerated, that did not constitute defamation.
When Sheku Tanga was taken to court in June last year, the plaintiff hired virtually all the lawyers practicing in Kenema and its neighbouring town of Bo, making it almost impossible for the journalist to have a lawyer. The Sierra Leone Association of Journalists then hired the services of a Freetown-based lawyer, Ansu Lansana to represent him in court. SLAJ also ferried some of its members whenever the case came up.
The President of SLAJ, Umaru Fofana, who was in court, referred to the ruling as “a sign that press freedom may having being challenges but is still somehow alive in our countryâ€. He said SLAJ would do all it could to ensure that journalists were not intimidated by people who regard themselves as wealthy or in high positions in society.
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