Culled from the point.
Thursday, March 28, 2002
“I Heard You Are Looking For Me”
Kone Tells NIA Officer
Famara Kone suddenly walked into Mr. Hydara’s office shouting at the top of
his voice: “Well, I heard that you are looking for me. I am not hiding. Here
I am. All what I told The Point is the truth. I just arrived here and some
insiders were telling me that a state agent was looking for me, I told them
I am not hiding. I demanded to see you by all means,” Kone told NIA officer
Abdou Sidibeh in the editor’s office.
Sidibeh who came looking for him appeared relieved and said: ”Yes, we have
been looking for you as we have something to discuss with you. Would you
mind joining me to our office in Banjul?” Kone readily accepted the
invitation. Ebrima Sawaneh, a senior reporter with this paper said Kone
approached him insisting that he must see the NIA officer, even though he (
Sawaneh) told him that Hydara was busy with him.
Speaking to this paper before joining Sidibeh, Kone said: ”I was not hiding
and I am entirely at the disposal of the NIA if they want to see me. I stand
by what I told The Point.”
In answer to a question as to whether he was worried, Kone said on his way
out, “Why should I worry? I have nothing to worry about, I am serene.” The
above drama unfolded at the Point offices Friday, when Famara Kone,
President of the Movement for Justice in Africa Senegal branch, forcefully
walked into Mr. Hydara’s office and voluntarily surrendered himself to an
NIA officer Abdou Sidibeh, who said the Agency has been desperately looking
for him. This follows a story ran by this paper, in which Kone said he was
in Ouagadougou together with Kukoi Samba Sanyang, the man behind the 1981
abortive coup and believed to have orchestrated the Farafenni armed attack.
Kone, who recently fled to The Gambia claiming that his life was seriously
threatened by the Wade administration, said he knew Kukoi personally and
that they were together in Ouagadougou between 1992 and 1993. But Kone
pointed and that he had no business with the Gambian wanted fugitive. Since
the publication of the story, the NIA has been calling this paper asking for
Kone’s whereabouts, but the paper maintained that “we don’t know Kone’s
whereabouts and that it is not our business to say where he was.”
In the early hours of Friday, a man who identified himself as Abdou Sidibeh,
an NIA officer, stormed our offices and confronted Point’s Senior reporter
Pa Nderry M’bai, asking him about Kone’s whereabouts. “My name is Abdou
Sidibeh. I am from the President’s Office and I worked with the NIA. We
learned that you wrote Kone’s story and we have been looking for him for the
past couples of days but we couldn’t trace him. We have searched everywhere,
Brikama, Serrekunda and other places. You know the story you wrote touches
on national security and we want you to help us produce this man,” Sidibeh
told reporter M’Bai. But M’bai told him: “I do not know anything about
Kone’s whereabouts.”
Later, informed his managing editor Deyda Hydara about his encounter with
the NIA officer.”It’s the NIA again. One man is insisting that I must help
locate Kone” “Tell him to come and see me in my office” the ME said..
Sidibeh narrated their frantic efforts to trace the man, repeating: “We have
searched everywhere, Brikama, Serrekunda and other places. You know the
story you wrote touches on national security and we want you to help us
produce this man”. Mr. Hydara told him: “Well, Kone came here and Pa Nderry
interviewed him. We don’t know his whereabouts. You said you have been
looking for the man all this time and you could not trace him? The man is
not hiding. I don’t think the NIA is doing their job and if you don’t mind I
will write about this. This man has been here for more than a week in the
open and yet you say, you could not trace him”.
In response, Sidibeh said it was not a question of the NIA not doing their
job, but pointed out that the public sometimes doesn’t cooperate with State
agents.
Hydara further pointed out that the paper was interested in two aspects of
Kone’s story: his complaint about his safety to the African Centre and his
sojourn in Ouagagoudou, and not in his very serious libelous material that
could lead to a serious court case for the paper.
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