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Hassan Bility: Journalist and Human Rights Defender

Liberian journalist and human rights defender Hassan Bility was arrested in Monrovia on June 24, 2002, by two men in plain clothes believed to be members of the Criminal Investigation Division of the Liberia National Police. Kiss FM radio station in Monrovia reported that he had been picked up on suspicion of operating a "terrorist cell" for the armed rebel group Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD). At the time of his arrest, Mr. Bility was reportedly slapped and kicked before being shoved into a car and driven away. Two other men, later identified as Ansumana Kamara and Mohammad Kamara, brothers, were arrested along with Mr. Bility. None of the three was ever charged with a criminal offence.

Hassan Bility was held incommunicado for six months and tortured while in detention. After concerted national and international pressure -- from Amnesty International, among others -- Hassan Bility was released by the Liberian government on December 7, 2002, and handed over to the United States embassy in Monrovia. He was then flown out of the country, first to Ghana, where he received medical treatment for the torture he suffered, then to the United States. Ansumana and Mohammad Kamara were still in detention when LURD forces overtook Monrovia in June 2003. Their subsequent fate remains unknown.

Hassan Bility had been arrested, questioned and detained by the Liberian government twice previously, and the newspaper he edited, The Analyst, was twice closed because articles he'd published were deemed critical of the government.

In Liberia, journalists, human rights defenders, and those seen as critical of the government have been under constant threat of being arrested, held in detention without charge, and tortured. After President Charles Taylor declared a state of emergency in early February 2002, the repression increased. Members of the Mandingo ethnic group, whom the government has indiscriminately associated with LURD, were particularly vulnerable. Hassan Bility and the two Kamara brothers are all three of Mandingo ethnicity.