Journalist arrested for hitting cop: Police
When the protest heated up, he was stopped in the middle of filming by a policeman that shoves him backwards.
By
Mohamed Muzayyin Nazim
A journalist was arrested during a protest organised by the opposition coalition in Male on Thursday night after he hit a policeman, the police said on Saturday.
Mohamed Juman, a journalist with the online newspaper Avas, was arrested while covering Thursday night's rally as part of a series of protests organised by PPM-PNC in Male. Maldives Journalists' Association (MJA), a journalists' rights group, has expressed concern over the incident and condemned it.
In a tweet, the police said, "A journalist has been taken into custody in connection with a case in which a journalist obstructed a policeman when he tried to detain a person."
Though the police tweeted that he was "taken into custody", the police took him to court on Friday for remand hearing. The court, however, released him for lack of evidence.
Further investigation into the matter is underway.
The video of the journalist's arrest shows:
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When the protest heated up, he was stopped in the middle of filming by a policeman that shoves him backwards. With that, the video shows the journalist falling to the ground
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Standing up from the fall, the journalist can be seen shoving a policeman from behind, and then showing his journalist's card on his neck
After the journalist was released from custody, he said in a video interview on Friday that he was arrested without any warning and was beaten up by the police. The phone he was using for the video recording was also damaged, he said.
