Kadijatu Savage, a journalist with the privately-owned the Independent Observer newspaper was in the night reportedly arrested and detained by police personnel drawn from Motor Traffic Unit of the Freetown police for photographing their brutalities on motor taxi riders.
Savage who had gone to the central business district of the capital, to cover a police swoop on motor taxi riders, was violently beaten and detained briefly at the Freetown Central Police station, before being released upon the intervention of her managing editor, Jonathan Leigh.
The police descended on Savage and subjected her to severe beatings on realizing that she was photographing their atrocities on motor riders.
“I am a journalist working for the Independent Observer newspaper, I told the officer but (he did not) listen and started beating me. After manhandling me, he took me to the central police station where he told me that I would be charged her with an offence of obstructing the police”, she told the Media Foundation for West Africa.
The journalists suffered bodily pains and pains in her left eye.
Personnel and management of the newspaper roundly condemned the police action and formally launched a protest with the Sierra Leone Association of Journalists (SLAJ).
