On 28 July 2008, reporter Osei Kwame, of “Kumasi Mail”, an independent weekly newspaper based in Kumasi, Ghana’s second largest city, was detained and briefly held captive in the Chief’s Palace by Nana Osei Bonsu, chief of Abira, a town in the Kwabre District of the Ashanti Region.
Kwame told Media Foundation for West Africa’s (MFWA) correspondent that he had gone to the Chief’s Palace to check on an allegation that Nana Bonsu had paid 150 GH cedis (approx. US$150) as an “appeasement fee” to one of his subjects for allegedly sleeping with the person’s wife.
The correspondent said that after one and a half hours, Nana Bonsu and two of his bodyguards bundled Kwame into the chief’s car and drove him to a police station.
According to Kwame, a police officer at the station ordered his release
since he had acted “within the law”.
When MFWA contacted Nana Bonsu, he confirmed detaining the reporter but declined to comment any further.
