Emmanuel Nkea, the Cameroonian-born judge of the Special Criminal Court , yesterday , July 10, 2012 sent Daily Observer’s senior legal correspondent, Sidiq Asemota to the State Central Prison, Mile II for reason(s) unknown to this paper.

Sidiq, according to sources, was arrested at the premises of the High Court in Banjul while on his official assignment to cover and report legal stories. His arrest came in the wake of an arrest warrant issued against him by Justice Emanuel Nkea of the Special Criminal Court, sources say, but the Daily Observer is not officially notified of the development.

Observer security chief said that a man early yesterday morning came to ask of Asemota’s whereabouts but did not say why he was searching for him. The man further asked for Asemota’s telephone number, which the security chief declined to give out. And later that same day, Asemota personally telephoned the managing director of the Observer Company, Pa Malick Faye and informed him that security agents were taking him to Mile II. When MD Faye enquired why, Sidiq replied ‘They say its in connection to my story captioned ‘Two sentenced for forgery’ and before he could speak any further, communications broke down.

The said story was published on the Monday 9th July 2012 edition of the Daily Observer but Faye noted that he has since the publication of the said story not received any complaint from either party in the case and hence frowns at the decision of the judge to send his journalist to Mile II.

“I believe if the story has a problem, they should call us to lodge a complaint and we take appropriate steps to correct the error. But sending the journalist to prison without even notifying the Daily Observer which is the publisher of the said article is really shocking,” he stated.