Mali convicts 5 for insulting president in school essay

BAMAKO, June 27 (Reuters) A court in Mali convicted five journalists and a teacher for insulting President Amadou Toumani Toure over a high school essay assignment on the sexual indiscretions of an imaginary head of state.

Literature teacher Bassirou Kassim Minta, who asked his final-year secondary school class to write the humorous essay about the mistress of a fictional leader, was sentenced to two months in prison and 205 dollars fine yesterday.

He was banned in the closed-door trial from ever teaching again in the poor, landlocked West African state.

Seydina Oumar Diarra, journalist from the Info Matin newspaper, was sentenced to 13 days in prison and a 200,000 CFA franc fine after writing a June 1 article about the essay competition. Having already served two weeks since his arrest, Diarra was allowed to return home yesterday.

Diarra's editor, Sambi Toure, was given an eight month suspended sentence and also fined 200,000 CFA francs.

The editors of three other national newspapers accused of complicity -- Ibrahima Fall of Le Republicain, Alexis Kalambry of Les Echos and Hameye Cisse of Le Scorpion -- were sentenced to four months suspended sentence and fined the same sum.

The three published Diarra's article out of solidarity with him.

The teacher had invited his students to write about the imaginary case of a young student prostitute who has a child by a president and fights for it to be recognised.

The arrests of the six men have outraged international media freedom watchdogs who have accused the Malian authorities of violating democratic standards. Media rights watchdog Reporters Without Borders, which had demanded their release, said it was disappointed by the sentences.

''Having damaged relations between the government and the Malian media, this affair does not help the defenders of press liberty because it sets an example to authoritarian governments that even democracies can condemn journalists to prison for criticising the president,'' it said in a statement.

President Toure is a former parachute commando who first seized power in a 1991 coup and then won international acclaim for handing over to an elected president next year. Elected head of state in 2002, he won easy re-election in an April poll.

Reuters SRS VP0430