Rwandan police temporarily release three journalists

KIGALI, Nov 21 (AFP) - Journalists and the director of Rwanda's only independent newspaper who were arrested earlier in the week on charges of libel and "divisionism" have been provisionally released, police said Friday.

Rwandan police said they had held two journalists and the director of the Umuseso newspaper for questioning for almost 48 hours.

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"The three arrested journalists were provisionally released this morning while the inquiry follows its course," police spokesman Damas Gatare told AFP Friday.

But the journalists of the weekly paper said three other employees, including the deputy director MacDowell Kalisa, had also been arrested and then released.

On Thursday, Gatare said the three were arrested for having published "false rumours, within the framework of the law that prohibits inciting divisionism and libel".

Some 8,000 copies of the edition of the newspaper had been seized at the border with Uganda where Umuseso is printed.

The edition contained an article on the former head of the Rwanda army Nyamwasa Kayumba and other senior officers that caused offence, according to the police.

Kalisa told AFP that they had published an article stating that Kayumba was being demobilised.

"What is divisionist in that?" he said.

Captain Ndore Rurinda, an army spokesman, told AFP that the information was "false and seditious".

Kalisa, who police deny having arrested, also claimed to have been kicked by police officers while being questioned.

"They wanted us to give the sources of our information, but we refused," he added.

The previous director of Umuseso spent a month behind bars early this year on charges of "inciting divisionism and discrimination" before being released because of procedural errors.

The charges came after the weekly published a caricatural portrait of Rwandan President Paul Kagame and ran an article judged to be "divisionist."

Various international rights organisations deem accusations of "ethnic divisionism", in a country still scarred by a 1994 genocide, to be an excuse used by the government to try to silence its opponents.

During the 1994 genocide the Hutu army and militia groups slaughtered up to a million minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

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