Slain Journalist Laid to Rest

Murdered Journalist Ibrahim Foday

Over one hundred journalists turned out on Tuesday 21^st June 2011 to join hundreds of other mourners at the St Martin’s church in the east of Freetown to bid befitting farewell to their slain colleague Ibrahim Foday of the Exclusive Newspaper. 

Ibrahim, 38, was stabbed to death at Grafton in the outskirts of Freetown on 12 June as he covered a riot involving two communities disputing ownership of a plot of land. He was the second journalist to be buried in three days after Ibrahim El-Tayyib Bah who died of natural causes.

The officiating clergy, the Rev Fr Vincent Davies said the level of “lawlessness” in the country was becoming scarily alarming. He said journalists must keep standing up for the truth and not allow themselves to be dissuaded or cowed by those who took truth-telling to mean enmity. 

He prayed for divine protection for media practitioners and urged the authorities to act to reverse the current trend of violence in the country.

In his tribute, President of SLAJ, Umaru Fofana vowed to do all he could to bring the assailants to justice. He said SLAJ would hire the services of lawyers to work with the police on the matter. 

He said Ibrahim had died in the line of duty, referring to his killing premeditated murder. 

Police have arrested a police officer and the headman of Kossoh Town, one of the disputing communities, in connection with the killing of the journalist. Tunday Williams believed to have stabbed the journalist to death is at large. Stabbed in the right back, Ibrahim sustained a 7 cm-deep and 2 cm-wide wound which left his lungs severed before the knife hit his chest. 

By Olabisi Garrick