Supreme Court Jails Journalist Sinjela for 18 Months over Contempt
The Supreme Court has jailed Rainbow Newspaper Editor Derrick Sinjela to 18 months imprisonment for contempt of court.
Sinjela has been handed custodial sentence following his comments on the judgment in the case between Stanbic Bank Zambia and Savenda Management Services Limited.
He was cited for contempt of court by the Supreme Court and readily pleaded guilty to the charges.
Sinjela becomes the second high profile person to be convicted of contempt of court charges after anti-corruption activist Gregory Chifire who got a six year sentence.
His comments were continuously published in the Rainbow Newspaper between April and May 2018.
In a judgment delivered by the Supreme Court Judges led by Deputy Chief Justice Marvin Mwanamwambwa the court said that the sentence could have been more if the convict had not readily pleaded guilty.
Justice Mwanamwambwa said the repeated contemptuous remarks against the judiciary had made it necessary to hand Sinjela a custodial sentence to serve as a deterrent to the citizenry.
The Supreme Court said that Sinjela exceeded his professional bounds by labelling the judges corrupt in the manner they handled the Savenda versus Stanbic case.
Sinjela wrote a series of newspaper articles labelling the judgement corrupt by the court landing him in hot soup.
When the matter first came up for plea Sinjela pleaded guilty to contempt of court charges.
Sinjela was convicted on his own admission of guilt for publishing articles that were not balanced on Supreme Court judges who presided in a case between Savenda and Stanbic Bank.
The Supreme Court has been in the spotlight for a recent judgments where it jailed anti-corruption activist Gregory Chifire to six years imprisonment for contempt of court.
Meanwhile MISA Zambia Vice Chairperson Hyde Haguta said journalists should not be shaken by the sentence of Sinjela as long as they remained professional in their work.
“There is no need to fear as long as we are professional enough in our reporting and as long as we have the facts that we can defend “, he said.