The military junta ruling Mali has arrested two of the country's most prominent journalists in the span of 48 hours, in what press freedom organizations are calling the latest escalation in a systematic campaign to eliminate independent reporting.
On June 8, Chahana Takiou — a well-known television presenter and editorial director of the biweekly newspaper 22 Septembre — was detained by Mali's National Cybercrime Unit. The following day, Abdrahamane Keïta — director of Le Témoin newspaper and host of the widely watched television program Grand Jury — was summoned and jailed by the same unit.
Both men are now behind bars in Bamako's central prison. Neither has been formally tried. Their alleged crimes: criticizing the government's use of a broadly worded cybercrime law to silence the press, and stating a basic fact about the country's security situation that the military junta finds politically inconvenient.
Takiou's arrest is a case study in the junta's authoritarian logic — a journalist imprisoned under the very law he publicly condemned.
At a Pan-African media forum in Bamako, Takiou spoke openly about the government's weaponization of Mali's 2019 cybercrime statute. He had specifically criticized the two-year prison sentence handed down in March to fellow journalist Youssouf Sissoko, editor-in-chief of the weekly newspaper L'Alternance, who was prosecuted under that same cybercrime law for publishing a newspaper article questioning neighboring Niger's military ruler, Gen. Abdourahamane Tiani.
After being summoned on Tuesday by the judicial unit responsible for combating cybercrime, the journalist was questioned by prosecutors before being placed in custody.
