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Newspaper editor provisionally released

    NAIROBI

    Rwandan judicial authorities released on Thursday the editor of a privately owned Kigali newspaper who was accused of inciting division and discrimination in the country, the Rwandan News Agency (RNA) reported.

    Ismael Mbonigaba, the editor of Umuseso, had also been charged with publishing an article on 13 February titled "Twagiramungu to oppose Kagame in elections", RNA quoted his lawyer, Moise Ndayambaje, as saying. Mbonigaba was arrested on 22 January and held in the Kigali central prison, it said.

    Reporters Without Borders, a media rights body, protested on Tuesday, terming Mbonigaba’s detention as "unjustified”. It said Mbonigaba was arrested after his newspaper had reported on 13 January that former Prime Minister Faustin Twagiramungu would stand against President Paul Kagame in the next presidential election.

    "The article was accompanied by a cartoon of Kagame as King Solomon holding the hand of a baby representing the Democratic Republican Movement [MDR, a member of the government coalition], with a sword in his other hand," the rights body reported. "Two other people were shown pestering him about how to handle the MDR. The cartoon suggested he was the arbiter of the party's divisions and that he alone could decide its future."

    This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions

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