Journalists in court

The trial of three Angolan journalists charged with writing and publishing “defamatory” articles against President Eduardo Jose dos Santos, started in Luanda’s provincial court last week and was conducted in public, against the state’s wishes to hold the hearings in secret, the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) told IRIN on Tuesday.

Rafael Marques, appeared together with the editor of ‘Agora’ newspaper Antonio Freitas and the director of the newspaper Aguiar dos Santos. MISA representatives in Namibia told IRIN that the accused journalists have filed a brief of about 20 pages and offered about 500 pages of documents as evidence in their defence.

“The plaintiff, President Dos Santos, will be called upon to declare whether or not he accepts the defendants’ declaration,” said the MISA official. He added that if Dos Santos accepted the journalists’ declaration, the charges would be dropped. If he does not, the trial will go ahead.

Marques was arrested last October after writing an article in ‘Folha 8’, an independent bi-weekly newspaper, in which he accused the Angolan president of being a dictator who made personal gains out of the country’s 25-year civil war. He was detained for 41 days before being released on bail of US $80 under strict conditions that included denying him the right to travel outside Angola.

The human rights body, Amnesty International last November said that 20 Angolan journalists were detained last year on charges of defaming or slandering the state and crimes against the security of the state. It said that journalists’ homes and premises were searched and materials confiscated. Journalists have also been made to sign agreements that they would not publish or broadcast certain information, Amnesty International added.

The arrests followed shortly on the remarks made by Angola’s communications minister, Hendrik Vaal Neto, who warned newspapers and radio stations that they faced closure if they did not take a patriotic stance when reporting on the country’s civil war. “You have to be a nationalist before being a journalist,” Neto reportedly said.