AFP journalist released from jail

Rodrigo Angue Nguema, a journalist for the French news agency, Agence France Presse (AFP), was released by Equatorial Guinean authorities on Tuesday, after eights days in detention. No formal charges were proffered against him. "He was questioned over the sources of an article he wrote," a source in AFP's bureau in Libreville in nearby Gabon told IRIN. Nguema was arrested last Monday, two days after the government had accused foreign media of spreading false stories. The government had earlier strongly denied rumours of a possible coup plot in Equatorial Guinea. In a statement broadcast on national television and radio, government spokesman Antonio Fernando Nve Ngu, accused foreign agencies of spreading false stories, saying the rumours were "the fruits of their imagination". The government of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema has in the past been accused of harassing the press. In 2002, the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) secretary general Robert Menard wrote to Nguema saying: "Your country is one of the most repressive in Africa when it comes to press freedom." The country's human rights record has also drawn sharp criticisms from human rights organisations. Following a December 2002 visit, the Special Rapporteur of the UN’s Commission on Human Rights, Ambeyi Ligabo called for a parallel improvement in the realisation of human rights to accompany Equatorial Guinea’s oil-backed economic growth.