Conditions attached to journalists' release worry RSF

Reporters sans Frontieres has welcomed an announcement by Liberian President Charles Taylor that journalist Hassan Bility and two fellow detainees would be freed, but said it was concerned about the conditions set for their release. Taylor made the announcement on Monday. However, RSF quoted him as saying that they would be released after they "signed a statement acknowledging that they would be rearrested in the event of any violations". RSF commented that not only did Taylor not define what he understood by "violations", but he also said their release would not be "total...but a form of reprieve". Bility is the editor of a private weekly, The Analyst, which has been critical of the Taylor government. He was arrested in late June and accused of collaborating with the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy, an armed group fighting to remove Taylor from office. The two other men were arrested around the same time. Since their arrest all three have been held incommunicado. Moreover, they have never appeared in court although judges had ordered the state to produce them. RSF said "freeing a journalist and then preventing him from doing his job, under pain of arrest, is a form of censorship". It urged Taylor to grant the three detainees an unconditional release without the threat of imprisonment.