[CPJ] Dakar -- The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Nigerien authorities to swiftly and unconditionally release journalists Hamid Mahmoud, Massaouda Jaharou, and Mahaman Sani, with the privately owned Sahara FM radio station, after they were arrested for the second time in four days on May 10 for broadcasting information about the country's military cooperation with Russia.
[IFJ] Journalists Hamid Mahmoud, acting editor-in-chief of Sahara FM, Mahaman Sani, news presenter, and Massaouda Jaharou were all arrested on 7 May. Ibrahim Manzo Diallo, the Head of Air Infor Media - the group that owns Sahara FM - said: "Sahara FM had aired, on Wednesday, news of a breach of intelligence contracts between Niger and Russia, and the police arrested them the same day."
[MFWA] The Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) condemns the repeated arrest of three journalists in Agadez, northern Niger, for allegedly spreading misinformation about the country's intelligence cooperation with Russia and Turkey. The Sahara FM journalists, Hamid Mahmoud, Mahaman Sani and Massaouda Jaharou, were arrested twice in two days after discussing a foreign media report on air.
[Ecowas] The Extraordinary Session of the Council of Ministers of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) on the contingency plan and modalities on the withdrawal of Burkina Faso, Republics of Mali and Niger from ECOWAS holds from April 22 to 23, 2025, in Accra, Ghana.