The Deputy Editor of online news portal modernghana.com, Ajarfor Azunungu has been released after an arrest last Thursday.
He was together arrested with a colleague Emmanuel Britwum at their office in Accra by persons who identified themselves as National Security operatives.
According to the Private Newspaper Publishers Association of Ghana (PRINPAG), the two journalists were released by Saturday although the National Security Minister, Albert Kan-Daapah had assured the association that they would be released by close of last Friday.
Emmanuel Britwum was the first to be released on Friday. Ajarfor Azunungu was however released on Saturday morning.
Following the arrest of the journalists by the security agency, several groups mounted pressure for their release.
The groups including Journalists for Business Advocacy (JBA) and the Ghana WASH Journalists Network (GWJN), in separate statements, condemned the purported detention of the two journalists.
MFWA threatens court action
Earlier, the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) threatened to seek legal redress if the journalists were not released.
It has also called on the Minister of National Security and the National Security Co-ordinator to clarify the motive and circumstances surrounding the raid, who the perpetrators are and whether they were officially mandated to carry out the operation.
The editor of modernghana.com, William Nana Beeko, said the intruders did not present any warrant, adding that they seized laptops from the media organisation and arrested his deputy editor, Emmanuel Ajarfor Abugri, as well as Emmanuel Yeboah Britwum, a reporter.
The action is believed to be linked to a critical article his outfit published about the National Security Minister, Albert Kan Dapaah, and the ruling party’s Member of Parliament for Effutu constituency, Alexander Afenyo-Markin.
The continued detention of the journalists in an unknown location is a violation of their rights and the whole incident casts a slur on Ghana’s press freedom credentials as a country where the state generally refrains from interfering in the media.