According to a press release issued by UJT, Badour, who also worked for the media outlets Agence Tchadienne de Presseet Edition, was summoned by the judicial police of the 8th District in N’Djamena and when he arrived at the police station he was abducted by hooded armed men and forcefully taken away on 7 August.
The IFJ affiliate, the UJT, had called on the Chadian authorities to guarantee the safety of journalist Badour, and to release him immediately. The union statement stressed: “The place of a journalist is the newsroom and not in a detention centre. It is imperative to follow legal and judicial procedures and not to resort to abductions or arbitrary arrest. The importance of respecting the rights of journalists is a component of human rights ratified by Chad through various international treaties and conventions”.
The online news outlet, Tchadinfos, was suspended for several days in July and only resumed its operations on 1 August. Tchadinfos, the leading online news site in the country, was shut down after it refused to comply with a request from the former adviser to the Chadian President, Abakar Manany, demanding that articles written about him on the website be put down.
IFJ General Secretary Anthony Bellanger welcomed the release of the journalist and said that his abduction was an illegal act, which could only be interpreted as a sign of intimidation orchestrated to silence him. “If our colleague Badour Oumar Ali has committed any offence he should be taken to a competent court of law and charged accordingly. It is unacceptable that a journalist was abducted upon arrival at the police station, which is without doubt a fundamental violation of his rights”.
The IFJ joins its affiliate, the UJT, in urging the Chadian authorities to guarantee the safety of all journalists and to take concrete action to create a conducive environment for the media to flourish without unnecessary hindrance to media freedom and the freedom of expression.