A prominent Malian journalist was convicted under Mali’s cybercrime legislation for criticizing the use of that same law to silence another journalist. The verdict marks the latest escalation in the military junta’s widening assault on freedom of expression in the country.
On August 3, the national cybercrime court in Bamako, Mali’s capital, sentenced Chahana Takiou, editor of the biweekly 22 Septembre, to one year in prison.
Security forces arrested Takiou on June 8 after he publicly criticized the authorities for prosecuting a fellow journalist, Youssouf Sissoko, under the cybercrime law rather than Mali’s press laws. Sissoko was sentenced to two years in prison in June after he published an article critical of the military ruler of neighboring Niger.
Prosecutors charged Takiou with “undermining the credibility of the state through the judicial institution” and placed him in pretrial detention. Takiou’s lawyers, citing his diabetes and cardiovascular disease, requested provisional release on medical grounds, but the prosecutor rejected the request.
The day after Takiou’s arrest, the authorities arrested another journalist, Abdramane Keïta, director of the newspaper Le Témoin (The Witness), after he said on a television program that the Al-Qaeda-linked armed group Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wa al-Muslimeen (Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims, JNIM) controlled the northern city of Kidal. JNIM and allied Tuareg fighters recaptured Kidal in April following a three-year presence of Malian forces and Russian mercenaries. The authorities charged Keïta with “offense of a regionalist nature undermining national unity and the credibility of the state” and detained him pending a trial on August 17.
Takiou’s prosecution fits a broader pattern in Mali of using fabricated or politically motivated criminal charges to silence journalists, activists, opposition figures, and human rights defenders. Since seizing power in 2020, Mali’s military junta has steadily dismantled civic space. The authorities have banned media outlets, dissolved civil society organizations, abolished multiparty politics, and targeted dissidents through arbitrary arrests and enforced disappearances.
No one should face prison for peacefully expressing an opinion. Mali’s authorities should immediately release Takiou and Keïta, quash Takiou’s conviction, and drop all charges stemming solely from the peaceful exercise of freedom of expression. They should also do what Takiou suggested: end the misuse of cybercrime legislation to silence independent voices.
