By IPS Correspondents
COTONOU, Aug 11 2003 (IPS)

The detention of a popular lawyer for ‘insulting a judge’ has sparked a wave of protest and indignation within the civil society in Benin.

Magloire Yansunnu, who is also the President of the Communist Party of Benin, has been detained in Cotonou, the country’s commercial capital, since Jul. 23 for ‘insulting a judge in the exercise of his duties’.

The Communist Party contributed greatly to the restoration of multi-party democracy in Benin in 1990. It is now playing the role of an opposition party, constantly keeping the government of President Mathieu Kerekou on its toes.

In spite of two hearings and an appeal by defence lawyers, the judge has refused to release Yansunnu on bail.

Yansunnu was arrested after criticising the manner in which a judge handled a case involving a wealthy Nigerian businessman, Buruji Kashamu, also known as Kasmal.

”The judge, who made that decision, is either corrupt or incompetent,” he told a news conference organised by the League for Human Rights in Cotonou on Jun. 6.

Immediately, the attorney general’s office, armed with evidence from the news conference, ordered Yansunnu’s arrest.

Yansunnu claims that ”a clique of judges is bent on destroying the Communist Party of Benin like the Renaissance of Benin (the main opposition party) which it is also trying to paralyse”.

Yansunnu insists his statements at the news conference contain nothing new. His statements, he says, were already documented in a publication, known as the ”Faces of Corruption in Benin”, as well as in the conclusions of the General State of the Beninoir Justice System in 1996. Yansunnu says he is surprised that he would be prosecuted for denunciations of which he was not the author, and whose writers have already been brought to justice.

His detention has enraged the public. The president of the League for Human Rights, Julien Togbadja, called it an ”arbitrary and flagrant violation of human rights”.

The Cotonou Bar, after its general assembly on Jul. 25, voted to support its detained member. Up to 129 lawyers, including two Togolese advocates, volunteered on Jul. 28 to defend Yansunnu.

”Keeping Magloire Yansunnu in prison amounts to bringing back the period of quasi-freedom that used to exist in Benin before 1990,” warns the Organisation for the Defence of Human and People’s Rights, based in Cotonou.

”What happened to lawyer Yansunnu is regrettable,” says Jean-Baptiste Gnonhoue, president of the Benin chapter of Amnesty International. ”Last time, teachers were beaten up in the middle of marking students’ exams” in Cotonou, he recalls. Prior to that, it was journalists and students who were beaten up.

”I think it’s a lack of information on human rights and impunity by the authorities, causing all these misunderstandings,” Gnonhoue says.

The association of motorcycle-taxi drivers, known as ”zemidjans”, has called for the ”immediate and unconditional release of our lawyer; the lawyer of the poor and oppressed”.

The Renaissance of Benin, the party of former president Nicephore Soglo, believes Yansunnu’s detention was ordered to ”settle old political scores . under the guise of an affront to a judge”.

”In reality”, it says, the government is trying ”to test the reaction of peace-loving Beninoir”.

”It is about time we put an end to this problem,” says the Union of the Marginalised, a political party considered close to the ruling party.

Both pro and anti-government media outlets have taken up Yansunnu’s cause. ”Although we don’t pretend to do the job of judges, we must point out the absurdity of a system which decides to arrest a popular lawyer, while lets a man found with stolen vehicles at his house to go scot-free,” wrote the privately-owned newspaper Fraternite, considered a pro-government daily.

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