Reporters arrested while investigating killing

Burkinabe gendarmes have arrested two reporters of a Ouagadougou weekly who were investigating the shooting-death of a 12-year-old schoolboy. Newton Ahmed Barry and Germain Nama, reporters for ‘L’Independent’, were investigating the death of Flavien Nebie whose corpse was found in Bousse, a locality 50 km north of Ouagadougou. He died in a student demonstration against what student unions said were the ‘selective reforms’ at the University of Ouagadougou.

The reporters had found a bullet, which they suspected killed Nebie, embedded in a tree trunk. The bullet was later handed to the public prosecutor. It is unclear why the gendarmarie has arrested the reporters but Security Minister Djibril Bassolet has described the reporters as showing “total contempt” for state institutions, through their conduct.

However, Barry told IRIN that Bassolet was “annoyed with us because we did a job that is not a journalistic one”. Gendarmes took Barry and Nama to Bousse on Monday to explain how they had conducted their investigations. Investigative reporting has been the tradition of ‘L’Independent”. The original owner and editor of the weekly, Norbert Zongo, and three of his companions were found dead in December 1998 in a burnt-out car.

They had been investigating the death of the chauffeur of Francois Compaore, the president’s brother. An independent commission of inquiry named six presidential guardsmen as “leading suspects” in Zongo’s killing.