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Editorial misconduct

The Daily Observer's editorial having ran out of ideas decided to published the hacked contents of Panderry Mbai's contact list. Apart from the fact that the list was obtained through a criminal act (hacking), publishing the names and contact information of individuals and calling them informers could be libelous. How did the Daily Observers editorial maintain that these people are the sources behind the freedom newspapers stories? The lack of judgement displayed by the editorial is turning into a nightmare for certain people whose only crime is that they happen to know Panderry.The police couldn't help themselves. They have release the following press release:

The Gambia Police Force has called on those whose names, addresses, telephone numbers and email addresses were published as informers to Pa Nderry Mbai, the publisher of the online newspaper, Freedom Newspaper, to report to the nearest police station within 24 hours.

According to a release issued by the police yesterday, failure to comply with this directive will result in immediate arrest and prosecution.The release concludes by soliciting the cooperation of the general public. Below we reproduce the full text of the release:

1. Following Pa Nderry Mbai’s declaration on Tuesday 23rd May, 2006 that he has decided to stop producing his on- line Freedom News Paper, and subsequent revelation of his sources of information, the general public is hereby informed that the Security Services are in possession of the full list of persons who continuously supplied him (Pa Nderry) with information, which he used to castigate and vilify the democratically-elected government of His Excellency, President Dr Alhaji Yahya AJJ Jammeh.

2. Consequently, all those whose names, addresses, telephone numbers and E-mail addresses appear in the said list and published in the Daily Observer News paper edition of Thursday 25th May 2006, are hereby urged to report to the nearest police station within twenty- four hours.

3. Failure to comply will result in immediate arrest and prosecution.

4. The cooperation of the general public is highly solicited.


These people are not serious. Panderry was the victim of cyber vandalism. He never wrote what they are attributing to him. The observer editorial knew this. However for reasons best known to them, they decided to publish the names of innocent citizens. The police having nothing important to do decided to use the same tainted information to scare innocent people. Talk about a police state...literally.

2 Comments:

  1. Anonymous said...
    This is some scary stuff...
    Anonymous said...
    Ous, I thought this was a joke only to my surprise that it is real. Jammeh's Adm. is full of funny characters. There are more serious issues for The Gambia government to pursue rather than trying to censure mere individual contributions to a website. I guess the state resources could be fairly apportioned for these kind of petty cases at all times. What a real joke!!!!

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