New York, June 4, 2010—Veteran Zambian Editor Fred M’membe was sent to prison today following his sentencing for contempt of court sparked by an op-ed on the state’s prosecution of a journalist, according to local journalists and news reports.
Having convicted M’membe earlier this week, Magistrate David Simusamba sentenced the the editor-in-chief of Zambia’s largest newspaper, The Post, to four months in prison with hard labor, according to news reports. M’membe, a 1995 recipient of CPJ’s International Press Freedom Award, was immediately escorted to Chimbokaila Prison in the capital, Lusaka, where he will spend the weekend pending an application for bail, The
The magistrate justified the prison sentence by asserting that the paper’s publication of a November 2009 op-ed about the trial of