adminMONROVIA. — One of Liberia’s leading local daily newspapers has been shut down after its publisher was jailed for libel over reports about government corruption, its staff said yesterday. Rodney Sieh, managing director of Frontpage Africa, was taken into custody on Wednesday last week following a Supreme Court ruling that the paper should pay US$1,6 million for libelling former agriculture minister J. Chris Toe.
The court ordered that the paper be closed down until the damages are paid in full. “Law enforcement officers closed our offices on Friday . . . The workers have all stopped coming to work because the building was locked by the court,” Wade Williams, one of the paper’s editors, told AFP.
Toe successfully sued the paper after Sieh wrote a series of stories in 2009 accusing the minister of embezzling agriculture ministry funds.
Williams said Sieh had been on hunger strike since his arrest on Wednesday last week.
Frontpage has been vociferous in its criticism of the government of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in recent years.
Sieh is expected to remain incarcerated until he pays the damages or Sirleaf intervenes.
Press freedom lobby group Reporters Without Borders condemned the Supreme Court’s decision to close the paper. “The ban was ordered shortly after the Press Union of Liberia and civil society representatives tried to negotiate with the authorities in order to prevent the newspaper’s closure,” it said in a statement. — AFP.
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