Justice Darboe of The Voice is currently under police custody charged with false publication and broadcasting. The detention is in relation to a publication in The Voice this week which he authored asserting that President Barrow is planning not to contest the next presidential election, but to groom Muhammed Jah of QCell to become the NPP candidate for the 2026 presidential election.
This did not go down well with President Barrow and he got his lawyer to write to The Voice to retract their story within 24 hours, apologise and pay damages to him. This was on Wednesday, but on Thursday the police invited Musa Sheriff (the proprietor of The Voice) and Justice Darboe (a reporter of The Voice and the author of the story) for questioning. They were interrogated for several hours after which Justice Darboe was detained and Musa Sheriff was released.
For the information of the reader, Dou Sanneh, a presidential adviser, did get The Voice to publish a rejoinder in which he vehemently denied that President Barrow had no intention of stepping aside for Muhammed Jah.
False publication and broadcasting is one of the enactments in criminal law which President Barrow promised to repeal in his manifesto of 2016. The law on sedition and decriminalizing libel were included. Now he is applying the very law he claimed to be repressive at the time.
