bique has warned. MISA was reacting to the effective closure of the independent weekly paper “Faisca” by a court in the northern city of Lichinga. On April 15, 2007, court officials descended on the “Faisca” offices for the second time in less than a month to seize equipment in order to meet damages awarded against the paper in a libel suit. The result is that “Faisca” has lost four computers, four printers, a photocopier, a generator and a fax machine. This makes it virtually impossible for the “Faisca” journalists to produce their paper. The libel case dates back to an article of February 2005, which claimed that a Mozambican woman named Matilde Sonato had been raped by a group of Tanzanians. The paper even published a photo of the alleged rape. Sonato denied the story, and sued its author, Feliciano Wiriamo, for libel. The Lichinga City court found in favour of Sonato in September 2005, and ordered “Faisca” to pay damages of 100,000 meticais (about US$4 000). For a small circulation paper in northern Mozambique, this is a huge sum. “Faisca” failed to raise the money, Sonato demanded her damages, and eventually the court raided the paper twice, on March 22 and April 12, removing all its equipment. MISA regarded the court’s actions as “premeditated judicial harassment”, intended to bring about the closure of “Faisca”. UPDATE: Despite the seizure of its computer equipment by court officials, the weekly paper “Faisca”, published in the northern Mozambican province of Niassa, has vowed to continue publication - even if it has to use typewriters. At present, the paper is being produced using the equipment of MISA Mozambique. • ALERT Date: April 13, 2007 Persons: Citizens of Mozambique, media in Mozambique Violation: Detained On April 13 a Maputo court found political commentator Edwin Hounnou guilty of libelling a prominent member of parliament for the former rebel movement Renamo, and sentenced him to six months imprisonment. Hounnou (also known as Charles Baptista) will not have to spend any time in jail, since the judge converted the sentence into a fine at the rate of 20 meticais a day. He was also fined an additional 4,200 meticais, bringing the total to 7,800 meticais (about 320 US dollars). The case arose from an article by Hounnou, published in the January 27, 2005, issue of the weekly paper “Zambeze”, which claimed that the ruling Frelimo gave a bribe of a million US dollars to Francisco Machambisse, election agent for the Renamo leader and presidential candidate, Afonso Dhlakama. Hounnou claimed that the supposed Frelimo bribe to Machambisse explained why the Renamo appeal against the results of the December 2004 general elections was delivered late. Frelimo dismissed the claim as absurd, and Machambisse sued Hounnou and “Zambeze” for libel. The guilty verdict was inevitable when Hounnou failed to provide any evidence to support his claim. • ALERT Date: April 5, 2007 Persons: Zambeze newspaper, Faruk Gadit Violation: Censored A prominent lawyer, Albano Silva, who is also the husband of Prime Minister Luisa Diogo, is sueing Faruk Gadit, the man who suggested that he had used a loan from the Mozambican So This Is Democracy? 2007 -59- Media Institute of Southern Africa