Washington, DC — Civilian authorities in Monrovia continue to defy court orders to produce journalist Hassan Bility who was arrested last week and accused of operating a Lurd (Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy) rebel cell that was plotting the assassination of President Charles Taylor.
Bility who is editor of the weekly newspaper, The Analyst, has been detained since July 1.
Bility is in military hands, Liberian Minister of information, Reginald B. Goodridge told allAfrica.com by phone, and "probably" will be tried by a military tribunal.
Although Bility's role as editor of his newspaper is well known, and The Analyst declared the government's web site an "Internet Giant of the Year" earlier this year, Goodridge vehemently denied that Bility is a journalist.
"We are not dealing with a journalist. He wasn't arrested because of anything he published or anything he wrote or anything he said. He was arrested as the ringleader of a plot to assassinate the President of Liberia," he said.
When asked by allAfrica's Washington-based reporter why Bility should not receive a public trial, Goodridge responded: "This man is being held as an unlawful combatant and it was you guys [the U.S. government] who coined the phrase. We are using the phrase you coined."
Wednesday, Reporters Without Borders asked the chairman of the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, Diego Garcia-Sayan, to "intervene urgently," with the Liberian Government. "We hope the allegation of plotting to kill the president is not just an excuse to gag a journalist who has been harshly critical of the government," the group's secretary-general, Robert Ménard said in a statement from Paris.
Earlier this year four other journalists working for The Analyst were arrested for articles that government authorities said "poisoned the minds of the people." The newspaper was shut down for a month.
In its statement, Reporters Without Borders expressed concern that Bility may have died under torture. Goodridge told allAfrica.com, however, that Bility is now "cooperating" with the investigation.
