Nairobi — A Lusaka Magistrates' court today freed a newspaper news editor who stood charged for circulating photographs of a woman in labour during Zambia's strike earlier this year.

Chief resident Magistrate Mr Charles Kafunda found Zambia's The Post newspaper news editor Ms Chansa Kabwela with no case to answer and she has since been freed.

Mr Kafunda told the fully packed court in Lusaka that the prosecution did not show that the photographs Ms Kabwela circulated to the Vice-President Mr George Kunda, other senior government officials and selected women's organizations and a church leader could corrupt public morals.

Earlier this year, Ms Kabwela received photographs of a woman giving birth outside a hospital in Lusaka without medical care at the peak of health workers' strike but since they were gruesome she decided not to publish them but wrote a letter and enclosed the same photographs which she sent to Vice-President George Kunda, Health minister and other government officials hoping the pictures would move them to end the strike.