Ivory Coast suspends daily over coverage of opposition probe

Ivory Coast's media overseer has ordered the suspension of a newspaper for its coverage of a judicial probe into a senior opposition figure.

Le Temps, an opposition daily close to former president Laurent Gbagbo, has been suspended for six issues and its boss, Yacouba Gbane, handed a three-month ban from publishing, the National Press Authority (ANP) said late Wednesday.

It accused the paper of "harming the judiciary" on two counts connected to its coverage of a case involving Damana Pickass, head of Gbagbo's PPA-CI party.

Pickass is under investigation over his alleged role in an attack on a barracks in Abidjan, the West African state's commercial hub, in 2021.

On February 24, 31 people were arrested after they mounted a show of protest for him.

Of these, 26 were handed two-year terms on March 9 for breaching public order, a move that had triggered criticism from Amnesty International. The sentences were reduced on March 22 to suspended terms.

The ANP said it was punishing Le Temps after it published a photo of the examining magistrate who had twice brought in Pickass for questioning over the 2021 attack.

It also criticized two articles penned by Gbane, in which he notably accused "the judges" of "having become the secular arms of the regime" of President Alassane Ouattara.

The photo harmed "judicial secrecy and... (the magistrate's) physical integrity" while the articles "infringe the honor of and respect for the judicial body", the ANP said.

- 'Digging the grave of press freedom' -
Gbane, asked to react by AFP, said the ruling was an "injustice".

"The people who are running the ANP are digging the grave of freedom of the press," he said.

The ANP had slapped Le Temps with a 26-issue ban in February and Gbane with a month-long bar on publishing after it ran an article "critical of the Ouattara regime".

The world's top cocoa producer, Ivory Coast is struggling to emerge from two bouts of violent turbulence in the past dozen years.

In 2011, a brief but bloody civil war erupted, claiming some 3,000 lives, when then-president Gbagbo refused to step down after losing elections to Ouattara.

A crisis erupted again in 2020, when Ouattara won a third presidential term in contested elections that led to 85 deaths.

But legislative polls the following year passed off calmly.

Tensions also eased when Gbagbo returned home after being acquitted on human rights charges by the International Criminal Court (ICC). 

On his return, Gbagbo quit the party he had founded, the Ivorian Popular Front (FPI). He launched the African Peoples' Party - Ivory Coast (PPA-CI), a left-wing pan-African group, of which Pickass is the general secretary.

AFP