Ivorian reporters tortured, jailed illegally-lawyer

ABIDJAN (Reuters) - Two Ivorian journalists seized by soldiers loyal to Laurent Gbagbo a week ago have been beaten with rifle butts and burnt with cigarettes and are being held illegally without charges, their lawyer said.

Aboubakar Sanogo and Charles Kangbe, reporters for an unlicensed TV station in the northern rebel-held city of Bouake, were arrested during a trip to the country's main city Abidjan to interview Gbagbo's rival, Alassane Ouattara.

"One had an eye swollen right up from being smashed in the face with a rifle butt and they were burnt with cigarettes," their lawyer Brahima Coulibaly told Reuters late on Thursday after he met with them in detention.

He said the mistreatment occurred during an interrogation by Ivorian military police and that his clients had since been transferred to a military jail. He said that under Ivorian law the journalists must be charged or released within 48 hours.

"Since they were transferred from the gendarmes to the military jail they haven't been mistreated," Coulibaly said. But "they are very afraid because we're now in a lawless country in which people can do what they want."

A spokesman for the military police said by telephone that he could not comment.

Gbagbo and Ouattara are embroiled in a violent power struggle over a disputed November 28 presidential vote that electoral commission results showed Ouattara won, but which the incumbent refuses to concede with backing from Ivory Coast's top legal body and the military.

Defying international pressure and sanctions to quit, Gbagbo has dug in, using the army to entrench his position.

His troops have besieged the hotel where Ouattara's rival administration is based, seized the central bank offices and the electricity company, attacked U.N. staff and frequently crack down on media that do not support him.

Sanogo and Kangbe arrived on a U.N. flight in Abidjan last Friday to interview Ouattara when gunmen in military uniforms seized them as they waited for a taxi from the airport.

State media denounced the reporters as "rebels" working for the New Forces who have run half the country since a 2002-03 civil war and now back Ouattara. The TV station they work for is seen as sympathetic to the northern cause.

Scores of journalists have been attacked or harassed by pro-Gbagbo security forces since the election, Stephane Goue, who heads the Ivorian Committee to Protect Journalists, told Reuters on Friday. Some have been dispersed with gunfire, or captured and forced to stand in stressful positions. Printing presses have been periodically shut down by soldiers, he added.

Reporters have also been detained, stripped naked or made to kneel at gunpoint in mock executions, press freedom groups note.

(Editing by Mark Heinrich)