Angolan police seize independent newspaper’s computers
New York, 13 Mar – (ANA) - The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has condemned Angolan police raid at the independent weekly Folha 8, which has effectively crippled the operations of one of the country’s two remaining independent publications. According to reports, about 15 officers of the Angolan National Directorate of Criminal Investigations arrived at the Luanda offices of Folha 8.
The officials took away about 20 computers from the newsroom, António Setas, the paper’s deputy director, told CPJ. Officials also forced , the paper’s editor-in-chief, Fernando Baxi, to remove the battery of his cell phone during the seizure to prevent him from communicating with anyone, Setas said. In an interview with the Portugal-based news agency LUSA today, Folha 8 editor William Tonet said the raid was connected to a public prosecutor’s December 2011 criminal investigation into the paper’s re-publication of an Internet photo montage lampooning President José Eduardo dos Santos, Vice President Fernando Piedade Dias dos Santos, and Gen. Manuel Helder Vieira Dias Júnior Kopelipa, the military adviser to the president. No formal charges in the investigation have been filed, but the newspaper’s computers could be used as evidence against them in the case, local journalists told CPJ.(ANA)
FA/ANA/13 March 2012---------