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Gambia News : Today newspaper editors arrested

Today's editor-in-chief Abdulhamid Adiamoh and student editor Edward Carayol were arrested after an article in the paper's Wednesday edition reported "that the country's Attorney General and Minister of Justice Marie Saine-Firdaus and other senior government officials had been fired", a police source said.

"Abdulhamid and Edward are currently with us here at the Serious Crime Unit of the police headquarters in Banjul helping us in our investigation," a police officer who spoke on condition of anonymity told AFP.

The two journalists are yet to be charged but sources said they would likely be accused of false publication.

Earlier this week, Gambian President Yahya Jammeh replaced the country's chief justice and sacked his finance minister and speaker of parliament in a major government shakeup.

Observers say Jammeh, who seized power in a bloodless coup in 1994, frequently fires ministers and reshuffles government positions in a deliberate strategy to avoid any rival power base forming.

The changes announced this week make this shake-up one of the biggest in the president's 15 years in power.