Landry Ulrich Nguema Ngokpélé

Gender: Male
Radio Journalist

At about 4 p.m. on June 3, police officers with the Central Office for the Repression of Banditry (​OCRB) arrested Nguema Ngokpélé, the publication director of the privately owned Le Quotidien de Bangui newspaper, according to news reports, the journalist, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app, and a statement by the Central African Journalists’ Union. The officers took the journalist to the Ngaragba Central Prison in Bangui, the capital, where they held him overnight and granted him provisional release the following day, according to the journalist and a copy of the release order reviewed by CPJ. Police raided Nguema Ngokpélé’s room at the Bangui Ledger Plaza hotel while he was in detention and seized two computers, he said, adding that they had not been returned as of today. Nguema Ngokpélé told CPJ he was arrested while making a required appearance at the Bangui prosecutor’s office as part of a separate defamation case from September 2020. That case stemmed from Le Quotidien de Bangui’s coverage of alleged corruption by the country’s minister of water, forestry, hunting, and fishing, the journalist told CPJ; he added that he is required to appear at the prosecutor’s office weekly in relation to that case.

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