\n Ivory Coast's media overseer has ordered the suspension of a newspaper for its coverage of a judicial probe into a senior opposition figure.\n<\/p>\n
\n 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.\n<\/p>\n
\n 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.\n<\/p>\n
\n 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.\n<\/p>\n
\n On February 24, 31 people were arrested after they mounted a show of protest for him.\n<\/p>\n
\n 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.\n<\/p>\n
\n 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.\n<\/p>\n
\n It also criticised 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.\n<\/p>\n
\n The photo harmed \"judicial secrecy and... (the magistrate's) physical integrity\" while the articles \"infringe the honour of and respect for the judicial body\", the ANP said.\n<\/p>\n
\n - 'Digging the grave of press freedom' -\n<\/p>\n
\n Gbane, asked to react by AFP, said the ruling was an \"injustice\".\n<\/p>\n
\n \"The people who are running the ANP are digging the grave of freedom of the press,\" he said.\n<\/p>\n
\n 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\".\n<\/p>\n
\n The world's top cocoa producer, Ivory Coast is struggling to emerge from two bouts of violent turbulence in the past dozen years.\n<\/p>\n
\n 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.\n<\/p>\n
\n A crisis erupted again in 2020, when Ouattara won a third presidential term in contested elections that led to 85 deaths.\n<\/p>\n
\n But legislative polls the following year passed off calmly.\n<\/p>\n
\n Tensions also eased when Gbagbo returned home after being acquitted on human rights charges by the International Criminal Court (ICC).\n<\/p>\n
\n 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-115156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n