Mali editors held over fictional president's fling

A high school essay assignment in Mali on the sexual indiscretions of an imaginary president has landed five journalists and a teacher in jail charged with offending the real president.
The arrests in the landlocked West African state have outraged international media freedom watchdogs who have accused the Malian authorities of violating democratic standards. They called for the release of those arrested.
A Bamako prosecutor last week ordered the detention of Seydina Oumar Diarra, a reporter for the Info-Matin daily, after he wrote a June 1 article about an essay subject entitled "The Mistress of the President" that a local high school literature teacher set his students.
The teacher, Bassirou Kassim Minta of the Lycee Nanaissa Santara, was also arrested for having 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.
Diarra's editor, Sambi Toure, and three other Malian newspaper editors Ibrahima Fall of Le Republicain, Alexis Kalambry of Les Echos and Hameye Cisse of Le Scorpion were ordered detained by the same prosecutor on Wednesday on charges of "complicity in an insult against the president".
The three published Diarra's article out of solidarity with him. All five detainees are due to appear in court on June 26. The US-based Committee to Protect Journalists called the arrests "outrageous".
Reporters without Borders said the state prosecutor was "flouting democratic standards". "President Amadou Toumani Toure's silence on this matter is baffling," it added.
"Mali was hailed as an example of democracy in Africa, but as this case goes from bad to worse, it is looking more and more like an authoritarian regime, crippled by taboos and dangerous for those who show a lack of respect for an untouchable president," Reporters Without Borders said.
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.