The International Press Institute (IPI) welcomes news of the release of Niger journalist Abdoulaye Tiemogo, editor of the weekly Le Canard Dechainé, after two months in prison.

As reported by IPI in September, Tiemogo was sentenced to three months in prison for “casting discredit on a judicial ruling” following a comment he made on a private television channel about an international arrest warrant for exiled former Niger Prime Minister Hama Amadou on corruption charges.

Le Canard Dechainé reported that Tiemogo, who is in ill health, was sent to a civil prison in Ouallam, a town in the southwest of the country after security forces removed him by force from a hospital.

A court of appeal on 26 October reduced the sentence to two months instead of three, and since the journalist had already served 86 days in prison, released him immediately. The court did not, however, overturn the verdict.

Tiemogo told human rights groups that conditions in the prison were “appalling,” and that he remains in poor health. He reportedly also expressed his determination to return to work soon.

IPI Deputy-Director Alison Bethel-McKenzie said: “While we are happy to hear of Tiemogo’s release, we believe that he should never have spent time in prison in the first place. Journalists have the right to comment on the activities of political and public figures, and governments must refrain from using defamation legislation to punish them for doing their jobs.”

This was not the journalist’s first run-in with the authorities. He told reporters that he had already been arrested five times, and had been forced to seek exile in Mali in 2003. In 2008, he told Burkina Faso’s L’Observateur that he had been forced to flee to Burkina Faso, which shares borders with Niger, to avoid being killed.

“When I thought about where I could go as soon as possible to avoid being killed, because that’s how it was, I told myself it was absolutely necessary to get to Burkina,” he said. “It is the border closest to my country, Niger.”

Tiemogo is one of a number of journalists who have fallen victim to Niger’s poor record on media freedom.

On 20 September the director of weekly Niger news magazine Le Témoin (The Witness), Ibrahim Soumana Gaoh, was arrested on charges of defaming the country’s communications minister in a 14 September article entitled “Wassosso à la SONITEL” which implicated the minister in a financial scandal.