Staff Reporters
PROMINENT Lawyer Christopher Lephuthing has vigorously condemned the Directorate on Corruption and Economic Offences (DCEO) for seizing an editor’s mobile phones and downloading information without court authorisation.
Mr Lephuthing said instead of hounding journalists, the DCEO should be working with them as some media outlets had done a commendable job in regularly exposing corruption.
The DCEO should be following up on and investigating media exposes about corruption to bring the culprits to book in the national interest and curb graft which had cost Lesotho dearly over the years.
Even though the DCEO released Lesotho Times and Sunday Express editor, Mohalenyane Phakela, late yesterday amid mounting international pressure against his arrest, it is still holding his two mobile phones. No warrant authorising the seizure of the phones was produced by the DCEO during Mr Phakela’s interrogation.
Mr Lephuthing later joined Mr Phakela after the interrogation had started but was not shown any warrant authorising the move.
“He (Phakela) is a journalist. His mobile phones are privileged and protected by the law. They have violated his constitutional rights . . . . There are already established precedents that you cannot just seize a private citizen’s phone without a legally issued search warrant . . . .,” said Mr Lephuthing.
“We are going to object to any charges emanating from illegal actions being read in court on Monday. We cannot be expected to plead and endorse an illegality . . . .”
Mr Lephuthing said he had tried to persuade the DCEO’s officers that their allegations against Mr Phakela make no legal sense but to no avail.
He said it became very clear during the interrogation that they had been desperate for an excuse to target Mr Phakela, harass him and breakdown his spirit and motivation to do his work and scare him from ever reporting on anything involving the DCEO.
“Phakela has been arrested and detained by the DCEO on allegations that he impersonated himself as an official of the DCEO to persuade Maseru Toyota to release a letter that the DCEO wrote in December 2024 to Maseru Toyota over some donated televisions….,” Mr Lephuthing said in an interview late on Friday after the DCEO had initially refused to release Mr Phakela.
Mr Lephuthing had asked them to release him into his custody and the lawyer had undertaken to bring him to court on Monday as he was a mere journalist and not a criminal who deserved to be kept in custody. The DCEO had rejected Mr Lephuthing’s pleas.
“I told them it did not make sense that he (Phakela) could impersonate himself as a DCEO official to receive a letter that he would have sent as a DCEO officer . . . How do you impersonate to get a letter sent by yourself. . . How do you impersonate to get your own letter that you have authored and sent or sent by the institution you represent . . .?
“The charges they are trying to raise make no sense . . . .
“It became clear in the interrogation that they have long had issues with Phakela and they are desperate for an excuse to target him . . . . They started talking about other stories that Phakela has written based on documents obtained from the DCEO like the M109 million agriculture tender . . .
“What surprises me is that charges were withdrawn against Lineo Nare, who was alleged to have leaked the DCEO document involving that tender . . . but they (DCEO officials) seem not to know about it despite that it’s their boss who ordered the withdrawal of the charges. They are still angry that the docket was leaked. Now they want to use Phakela as a sacrificial lamb. It is not right. The media is the lifeblood of democracy and journalists must not be treated like they are hard core criminals.”
Piffle
Africa Media Holdings (AMH-Lesotho), the publishers of the Sunday Express, the Lesotho Times and the fast-growing radio station – Mohale FM – of which Mr Phakela is the overall head of news – have equated the DCEO’s impersonation claims to an inverted pyramid of piffle.
“These allegations are complete balderdash. They are nonsense and the DCEO could have done better….” said AMH spokesman, Flo Piroro.
“We will explore every avenue to hold the DCEO accountable for its illegal actions. Seizing the phones of a journalist is more than just an intimidation tactic. It’s diabolic. It looks like the very institution tasked with exposing corruption is now bent on suppressing it.
“Why should the DCEO be worried that journalists are reporting on its work, if it indeed wants corrupt criminals to be stopped…”
The DCEO is free to bring the matter to court if it so wishes. Its charges will be fought against very vigorously. Even if it harangued an official from Toyota Maseru into issuing a witness statement alleging that Mr Phakela impersonated himself, that statement will be exposed as a concocted hoax.
The official at Toyota Maseru whom Mr Phakela approached over the television donation story is very well known to Mr Phakela and they are long term family friends.
There was no way she would not have known that Mr Phakela was a journalist.
It was the official’s decision to send information about the story to Mr Phakela by email. Mr Phakela had given the official both his private gmail account and his official editor@lestimes.co.ls account. The official had erroneously copied her mail to the DCEO including their letter of inquiry. There is simply no basis for impersonation.
While no one, including journalists, is above the law and everyone should be subjected to the law if they transgress, law enforcement authorities themselves must also act within the confines of the law. Seizing a journalist’s phone to snoop on their contacts without a court warrant is egregiously diabolic.
And according to AMH CEO Basil Peta, picking a journalist on a Friday to prolong their period of incarceration is a brazen if not primitive intimidation tactic.
“We welcomed new DCEO boss Ntate Sello’s statement that the media is a critical cog and partner in the work of exposing corruption and economic crimes and his promise to make the media a natural ally of the DCEO.
“The behaviour of his officials on Friday unfortunately goes against that positive spirit of cooperation that Ntate Sello had spoken about.
“Let’s look at SA for example, the corrupt Gupta family would still have been looting and stealing billions to the further detriment of that country if it were not for the media.
“That’s why we had welcomed Ntate Sello’s positive spirit that the media is a key stakeholder in his work of fighting corruption . . . However, how will any journalist be comfortable to report on corruption with the possibility that they might be picked on a Friday and sent to spend a long weekend in uncomfortable detention?”