Dakar, June 16, 2026—The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Malian authorities to release two prominent journalists
imprisoned
last week for criticizing the country’s embattled military government over its press freedom record and losses to insurgents.
“Malian authorities must stop their frenzied arrests of journalists, drop the charges against Abdrahamane Keïta and Chahana Takiou, and release them, as well as fellow journalist
Youssouf Sissoko
,” said Moussa Ngom, CPJ’s Francophone Africa representative. “It is ironic that Malian authorities used the cybercrime law to arrest Chahana Takiou for speaking out about its misuse against the press. They have only proven that his comments were 100% accurate.”
The cybercrime unit was set up in 2022 and
given
the power to use eight legal texts to prosecute online offenses. The vague wording of the 2019 cybercrimes law eliminates the protection that journalists had under the 2000 press law with lighter sentences. Instead, they can be subject to the same weighty penalties as ordinary citizens.
On June 8, the National Cybercrime Unit ordered the
arrest
of Chahana Takiou, publishing director of the biweekly 22 Septembre newspaper, over his
comments
at a
media forum
. Takiou condemned the
two-year sentence
handed down to journalist
Youssouf Sissoko
in March for “undermining the state’s credibility” with a newspaper commentary about neighboring Niger’s president that was shared on social media.
“He should have been tried under the press law, but since the advent of the cybercrime law, judges have been superbly ignoring it,” Takiou said to a prosecutor on a discussion panel.
Takiou was remanded in prison in the capital, Bamako, pending trial on July 27, under the cybercrime law, for “undermining the state’s reputation through the judicial system.”
Arrested for comment about militants
On June 9, the cybercrime unit also summoned and
detained
Abdrahamane Keïta, director of Le Témoin newspaper, aft
