Hausa Filmmaker and former candidate for Governor in Kano State Hamisu Lamido Iyan Tama Sentenced to 15 months in Prison at Mobile Court

I'm at a desperately slow internet cafe, so these links should serve as the text of this post. Hamisu Lamido Iyan Tama, award winning filmmaker and former gubanatorial candidate in Kano state, has been sentenced to 15 months in prison by a mobile court, for supposedly not registering with the Kano State Censorship Board.

See the details on Abdulaziz Ahmad Abdulaziz's blog article (also published on 1 Jan 2008 in Leadership), on the new blogspot Free Iyan Tama, and Kano State owned Triumph Newspaper.

So anyone reading this from Amnesty International? Human Rights Watch? Any other human rights organization or NGO? This is the time to step up....

Image credit from Free Iyan Tama's Flikr Photostream: Iyan Tama in 2007 at the Zuma Film Festival in Abuja, where he won an award for Best Social Issue film. The day after he returned to Kano, and was arrested for the first time for supposedly not registering with the Kano State Censorship Board, although he had a receipt for payment of registration.

Update: And for the best summary of the Iyan Tama case that I've seen so far, see Ibrahim Sheme's blog (an open letter to Governor Shekarau of Kano State) published in Leadership.