Moussa Aksar

Gender: Male
Radio Journalist

the High Court in Niamey, Niger’s capital, convicted Aksar and Sabou of violating the country’s 2019 cybercrime law, according to Ahamed Mamane, the journalists’ lawyer, who spoke to CPJ in a phone interview. The court convicted Sabou, editor of the privately owned Niger Search news website and manager of the privately owned Mides-Niger news website, of “defamation by electronic communication,” according to Mamane and court documents reviewed by CPJ. Aksar, publication director of the privately owned L’Evénement newspaper and chair of the Norbert Zongo Cell for Investigative Journalism in West Africa (CENOZO), a Burkina Faso-based news outlet and investigative journalism organization, was convicted of the same defamation charge and of “dissemination of data likely to disturb public order or undermine human dignity,” according to those sources. Aksar was given a suspended prison sentence of two months and fined 100,000 West African francs (US$172); Sabou was given a suspended prison sentence of one month and fined 50,000 francs (US$86), according to Mamane and those documents.

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