Editor who criticised new press law shot dead

A leading Gambian editor, who had criticised a new press law, was shot dead in the early hours of the morning with three bullets to the head, media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said on Friday. Deyda Hydara, who edited private newspaper The Point as well as being a correspondent for the French news agency AFP and RSF's man in Banjul, was killed as he drove away from his office just after midnight. "The killing comes at a moment of tension between the Gambian authorities and the independent press," Paris-based RSF said in a statement. On Monday, Gambia's parliament voted to toughen up legislation against private media operators. One law makes all press offences, including libel, punishable by imprisonment of up to six months for a first offence and three years for repeat offenders. The other law makes operating licences for private newspapers and radio stations five times as expensive as before. Owners now have to sign a bond worth 500,000 dalasis (US$ 17,000), and use their homes as collateral. In the Gambian capital Banjul, fellow journalists gathered at the morgue were visibly shaken by Hydara's brutal death. "This has become a very deadly place for journalists," said Demba Jawo, the president of the Gambian Press Union.. "He was openly critical of the government, particularly when it came to these repressive laws." A employee at The Point told IRIN that the two secretaries who had been in the car with the slain editor were in hospital with broken legs. Hydara, 58, was one of many journalists who had been campaigning against the government's attempts to clamp down on the media in this tiny West African country, surrounded on all sides by Senegal. This year the Gambian government had been trying to set up a media commission with the power to shut down newspapers and imprison reporters. After pressure from local journalists like Hydara and international media watchdogs, parliament finally spiked the commission plans on Monday, only to introduce the two new media laws. RSF said they had written to Gambian President Yaya Jammeh on Thursday asking him not to sign the new bills into law "so that Gambia's journalists are able to work in an untroubled and professional climate." In the past, Gambian President Yaya Jammeh, who came to power in a coup ten years ago, has threatened to bury journalists "six-feet deep". Earlier this year when asked about journalists criticising his attempts to make them register, Jammeh told state radio "We believe in giving each fool a long rope to hang themselves... They will either register or stop writing or go to Hell." Hydara wrote a letter to Jammeh immediately afterwards, condemning the head of state's words as "totally repugnant and reprehensible." As Gambia's justice and information ministers joined mourners on Friday outside the mortuary where Hydara's body is being kept, police promised an investigation into the killing.