Contradictory reasons given by Zambia police spokesperson for detention of broadcast journalists Rodgers Mwiimba and Innocent Phiri.

The Committee to Protect Journalists on Monday called on Zambian authorities to thoroughly investigate a police assault on journalist Rodgers Mwiimba and his two-hour detention, alongside a second journalist, Innocent Phiri.

On April 13, police officers arrested the two television journalists at Matanda Grounds, a public space in the town of Kafue, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of the capital, Lusaka, where the opposition United Kwacha Alliance planned to hold a political rally, according to news reports and the two journalists, who spoke with CPJ. Authorities banned the rally on the grounds that the recently formed opposition coalition was not registered.

Mwiimba and Phiri, who work with the privately owned Millennium TV and KBN TV respectively, told CPJ that they were filming an altercation between police officers and two opposition party leaders on their phones when about three other officers grabbed Phiri, and forced him into an armored police vehicle.

Mwiimba said that four other officers confronted him, kicked him to the ground, and bundled him into the same vehicle, even though he showed them his Millennium TV employee ID card to prove that he was a journalist.