Communiqué
This Wednesday, March 15, 2023, judges of the Intermediate Court of Lomé pronounced an iniquitous sentence once morest Ferdinand AYITE, Director of publication of the bi-weekly investigation and general information L’ALTERNATIVE and Isidore KOUWONOU, Editor-in-chief of the same newspaper, sentenced to 3 years in prison and a fine of 3 million CFA francs. These judges also announced the issuance of an arrest warrant once morest the two journalists. All this, for alleged contempt and insulting remarks towards authorities (two minister-pastors).
This iniquitous condemnation, which is only the epilogue of a long relentless attack on independent journalists who are only doing their job of investigating the underside of the country’s scandalous governance, also indicates the level of cruelty of those who, despite the mysterious death, almost a year to the day, of one of their prey, in this case the late Joël EGAH, Publication Director of the newspaper FRATERNITE, did not have the decency to put an end to their hunt once morest journalists, Ferdinand, Isidore and Joël.
This nth judicial harassment once morest the said journalists began in December 2021 following a talk show broadcast on the social networks of the editorial staff of L’ALTERNATIVE in which the three journalists participated and during which the Minister of Trade, Industry and Local consumption, Kodzo Adedze and his colleague in charge of Justice believe they have been defamed.
On Thursday, December 9, 2021, Ferdinand AYITE was arrested at the editorial office of his newspaper by men in civilian clothes who took him to the Research and Investigations Brigade (BRI) where he was interrogated and kept at seen. The next day, Joël EGAH and Isidore KOUWONOU were summoned in turn by the same service (BRI) where they were also subjected to long hours of interrogation, before being presented to the prosecutor in the evening and charged with contempt of authorities.
Ferdinand AYITE and Joël EGAH will then be placed under a warrant by the dean of the investigating judges and therefore sent to prison. Isidore KOUWONOU will be placed under judicial control, with a formal ban on leaving the perimeter of Lomé, the capital of Togo.
The detention of the two journalists which scandalized the whole world continued for three weeks before the justice granted them a provisional release accompanied by a demand for the presentation of a public apology to which the journalists complied.
This hard ordeal affected them deeply, before a suspicious death suddenly snatched Joël EGAH only a few weeks following their release.
Public opinion believed that according to the public promises of one of the minister-pastors, the affair was definitively closed.
But to everyone’s surprise, a summons to appear before the Lomé Court of First Instance on March 8, 2023 was sent to Ferdinand AYITE, Isidore KOUWONOU and even the late Joël EGAH. The two journalists were preparing for the trial with their lawyer Me Elom KPADE when on Saturday March 4, 2023, Ferdinand AYITE was arrested by the immigration police at the Togo-Benin border in Sanvée-Condji, deprived of his passport and kept in a room for regarding thirty minutes, with the driver of the car in which he was, before being picked up by the city’s Gendarmerie Brigade (Aného) with a team led by the Brigade Chief. He was identified and then taken under the guard of armed gendarmes to the premises of the Central Criminal Research and Investigations Service (SCRIC) in Lomé. Here, he underwent a series of interrogations led by the SCRIC commander and linked to his trip to Benin and the trial scheduled for March 8. The commander of the place then returns the passport to him and informs him that he will be taken to his home by a team of the gendarmerie.
Arrested around 6 p.m. at the border, he spent nearly 4 hours in the hands of the gendarmerie before being taken to his home around 10 p.m. There followed a siege of his neighborhood by elements of the gendarmerie.
On Sunday March 5, 2023, two SCRIC agents came to his home at 11:30 a.m., insisting on seeing him personally, before noting for themselves his absence and giving him a summons which they say came from the Minister of Security. asking him to report the same day at 3 p.m. to the SCRIC, with his passport and identity card.
Having already learned that he will be arrested once more on Sunday, Ferdinand AYITE made arrangements to take shelter on the morning of Sunday March 5 before leaving the territory a few days later.
His friends and associates were also subjected to surveillance, shadowing and even a brief abduction. Among them, Isidore KOUWONOU, Editor-in-chief of L’ALTERNATIVE and main host of the program “L’autre Journal” created by the editorial staff of the newspaper and broadcast on social networks. Informed of the plan to also worry the latter in the absence of its Director of publication, the Editorial staff has taken measures to also shelter him.
The Editorial Board informs the public that it has actually been more than a month since the Director of Publication Ferdinand AYITE was subject to increased surveillance at his home and shadowing in traffic by plainclothes agents on motorcycles. On the night of February 25, 2023 around 9:30 p.m., at a place called crossroads Y in the Avédji district in Lomé, while he was returning from an appointment on a motorcycle taxi, an unmarked car hit the motorcycle before fleeing. .
It is clear that for several years, the regime has been striving to silence one of the leading investigative newspapers in Togo through abusive suspensions of the High Authority for Audiovisual and Communication (HAAC), harassment judiciary through complaints before the courts, tax harassment, threats, etc. The parody of the March 15 trial and the ridiculous verdict that came out of it are only the culmination of a plan aimed at definitively silencing one of the newspapers which continue to inform the populations in complete independence and objectivity.
In a country where blood crimes and financial scandals have become news items and the perpetrators enjoy impunity, it is curious that justice is hounding journalists to the point of issuing arrest warrants once morest them just for alleged offenses of contempt and defamation. In this difficult context marked by an authoritarian drift and a shrinking of spaces for freedom of expression and of the press, L’ALTERNATIVE will find an alternative to continue by informing its readers and the entire Togolese people.
Done in Lomé, March 16, 2023
Sign
The Writing (of The Alternative)
