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 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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