LAWYERS IN PERIL - TOGO : Yawovi AGBOYIBO

TOGO

Yawovi AGBOYIBO,

former Bar President of Togo and chairman of the Action Committee for Renewal(CAR)

freed on March, 15 2002

after remaining in jail in spite of the cancellation in appeal of the criminal proceedings for libel charge filed in 1998 by the present Prime Minister.

On Friday, 15 March, 2002, Yawovi Agboyibo, jailed for nine months for supposedly libelling the prime minister, has been released, on from prison where he has spent most of the past nine months.

Mr Agboyibo said he had been taken completely by surprise when the state prosecutor came to the jail on Thursday night, and drove him home himself.

President Gnassingbe Eyadema said he had decided to free Mr Agboyibo in the interests of national reconciliation.

Yawovi AGBOYIBO, former Bar President of Togo and chairman of the Action Committee for Renewal(CAR), one of the main opposition groups, remained in jail in spite of the cancellation in appeal of the criminal proceedings for libel charge filed in 1998 by the present Prime Minister.
The former Bar President of Togo was arrested and sentenced to 6 months of imprisonment, on 6 August 2001, in Lomé, following a libel charge filed in 1998 by the present Prime Minister Kodjo AGBEYOME.. Agboyibo was sentenced to prison last month for accusing incumbent Prime Minister Mensan Kodjo of association with suspected criminals when he was head of the Lome port in 1998.
The way the trial has evolved, the severity of the sentence and the disproportionate nature of the immediate arrest in spite of an appeal having been filed, whereas neither the gravity of the infringement nor a risk of flight justified such measures, reveal the sentencing and imprisonment of Bar President AGBOYIBO as reprehensible acts.

On 15 February 2002, the President of a Court of appeal - against the two other judges opinion - said invalid the relase order. New charges were brought against Togolese opposition leader Yawovi Agboyibo, who is currently serving a six-month sentence for defamation, news organisations reported. A court in Lome said Agboyibo had links with a group of people suspected of committing crimes in the southern town of Sedome in 1997.
European Parliament Adopted on 6 September. resolution on human rights abuses in Togo: 'Reference: OJ C 54, 25.2.2000; Bull. 9-1999, point 1.1.6)

"Parliament called for the immediate and unconditional release of Mr Yawovi Agboyibo, chairman of the Action Committee for Renewal, one of the main opposition groups, who had been imprisoned for 'attacking the honour of the Prime Minister', so that he could stand as a candidate in the forthcoming elections. Parliament called on the Togolese authorities to hold, as soon as possible, free and transparent elections monitored by the European Union. It called on the latter to make the resumption of normal cooperation relations conditional on substantial progress being achieved on the human rights front."

L’IDHBB has serious doubts as to the fairness of the trial and as to the independence of the Court, and calls also for the immediate and unconditional release of Mr Yawovi Agboyibo.
More : FIDH Press Release.