The Gambia: Two journalists held illegally for the past week

Reporters Without Borders has voiced alarm at the impunity with which the Gambian government has been able to illegally detain Madi Ceesay, the managing director of the biweekly newspaper The Independent, and Musa Saydikhan, its editor, for the past week. The press freedom organisation wrote to the British, French and US ambassadors in Banjul calling on them to "urgently intercede with authorities to obtain the release of these two journalists," adding that their detention was illegal under Gambian law as charges must be brought against a detainee within 72 hours.