Proprietor and Managing Editor of Nightwatch Newspaper, Emmanuel Christian Thorli was arrested and detained by officers of the Operations Support Division (OSD) for an alleged riotous conduct.
The Editor was among 26 persons who were detained for several hours at Jui Police Station in the Western Area Rural district before he was transferred to the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) on Pa Demba Road in Freetown.
The arrest took place the previous Sunday on 6th February, this year. The Nightwatch Managing Editor told this press that he was arrested while interviewing the Chairman of the Western Rural District Council, Kasho Holland Cole during the SLRA raid on market stalls and booths belonging to petty traders.
The arrest he said was brutal adding that he was subjected to high level of incivility and thuggery by the arresting officers.
“I sustained bruises and minor injuries during the arrest he said,” he said.
Thorli also told this press that he struggled to inform the arresting officers that he was a journalist and his presence at the scene was to gather accurate information.
But, the seemingly furious officers, he went on, dragged him from the scene and later placed him tight in tight cell at Jui Police Station with 26 others who were also similarly arrested. The cell was stinky and congestion made it difficult for him to breathe. What struck him most, he continued, the arresting officers never explained to him any reason for his arrest and detention.
He however informed this press that he had temporal respite only when he was transferred to CID Headquaters.
Thorli who was speaking from a CID cell explained that he left his Yams Farm residence few kilometres away from Freetown heading for Wellington community for soccer training.
Soccer training on weekends, he said, had been part of schedules for years. On his arrival at the Jui Junction in his black jeep, he saw destruction of booths and market stalls on the roadside at Jui.
As a passionate journalist, he disembarked from his vehicle to know what had gone wrong. While he was at the scene investigating, he was arrested by police officers who accused him of rioting. At the CID Headquaters, Thorli was slammed with a charge of riotous conduct by the investigating officers.
He was almost going to be arraigned in a magistrate court in Freetown, but the intervention of Head of Police Media, Superintendent Brima Kamara and the President of Sierra Leone Association of Journalists (SLAJ), Ahmed Sahid Nasralla.
He was released the following Monday 7th February on the order of Head of CID, and referred to Head of Police Media for a brief address.
Thorli was set free after the address, but the ordeal he suffered in the hands of OSD personnel still lingers in his mind.