A national cybercrime court in Mali on September 14 sentenced a prominent journalist, Abdramane Keïta, to two years in prison on bogus charges, in the military government’s latest attack on media freedom. Click to expand Image Abdramane Keïta, director of the newspaper Le Témoin (The Witness), Bamako, Mali. © Private Security forces arrested Keïta, director of the newspaper Le Témoin (The Witness), on June 9 in Bamako, Mali’s capital, days after he commented on a television program that the Al-Qaeda-linked Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, or JNIM) controlled the northern city of Kidal. On April 25, JNIM and allied separatist fighters had launched coordinated attacks across Mali, killing the defense minister and seizing several northern cities, including Kidal. International media had widely reported that Kidal had fallen to the armed groups. On June 9, a prosecutor attached to the cybercrime court charged Keïta with “offense of a regional nature undermining national unity and the credibility of the state,” and put him in pretrial detention. His trial began on August 17. The day before Keïta’s arrest, the authorities arrested another journalist, Chahana Takiou, editor of the biweekly 22 Septembre, after he publicly criticized the authorities for prosecuting a fellow journalist, Youssouf Sissoko, under a broad cybercrime law. On August 3, the national cybercrime court sentenced Takiou to one year in prison.Keïta’s prosecution reflects a wider pattern in Mali in which the military authorities have sought to silence journalists, human rights defenders, and opposition figures for public criticism and dissent. Since taking power in a 2020 coup, the junta, led by Gen. Assimi Goita, has increasingly restricted fundamental rights and freedoms, including banning and suspending media outlets, dissolving civil society groups, ending multiparty politics, and subjecting critics to arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance.Keïta’s case is just the latest assault on media freedom in Mali and deepens an oppressive atmosphere in which journalists feel compelled to flee the country or self-censor their reporting. His conviction and prison sentence further undermine the public’s access to critical and independent information. The authorities should immediately and unconditionally release Keïta and Takiou, quash their convictions, and allow all journalists to exercise their right to freedom of expression without fear.