Dakar — The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Malian authorities to immediately release journalist Alfousseini Togo after he was arrested and detained April 9 on charges of undermining the state.
"Alfousseini Togo's arrest and detention for criticizing the judiciary sends a chilling signal to the entire Malian press, which is already suffering under the threat of government censorship," said Moussa Ngom, CPJ's Francophone Africa Representative. "Malian authorities should immediately release Alfousseini Togo and refrain from criminalizing media for doing their jobs."
On the day of Togo's arrest, a judge with the cybercrime unit in Bamako, the Malian capital, charged the journalist, who is the publishing director of the privately-owned weekly newspaper Le Canard de la Venise, with undermining the credit of the judiciary, disturbing public order and defamation over his April 8 report critiquing the justice system, according to news reports and Chiaka Doumbia, president of the Malian investigative journalists network, who spoke to CPJ.
Togo is being held in Bamako prison awaiting his trial, set to begin June 12, 2025, Doumbia told CPJ. The journalist faces up to two years in prison under articles 37 and 38 of the Press Code, which relate to false news, disturbing public order, and defamation, and article 242-74 of the Criminal Code of Mali, relating to undermining the state's reputation.
In his report, Togo questioned the credibility of a poll quoted by Justice Minister Mahamadou Kassogué that claimed public confidence in Mali's justice index increased "from 30% to 72% in 2024." Togo also said that the justice sector was ranked by the poll "second most corrupt after the police," adding that the "current transitional regime is taking advantage of the 'weakness' of the justice system to order arrests, intimidation, kidnappings and even extrajudicial detentions, in violation of the law."
Several foreign media outlets have been suspended and journalists arrested in Mali since military officers seized power in a coup in 2020.
CPJ's calls to the publicly listed Ministry of Justice's numbers went unanswered.
