Harry Yansaneh

Harry Yansaneh (died 28 July 2005) was the acting editor for the For Di People newspaper in Freetown, Sierra Leone, who died after being beaten up by a group of men. Yansaneh accused the men of working for his landlord, Fatamata Hassan Komeh (who was a Member of Parliament for the ruling Sierra Leone People's Party), who had been trying to evict the paper from their building because their reports were critical to the government. Although Komeh and two other men were arrested after Yansaneh's death, no charges were eventually brought.

Newspaper editor Harry Yansaneh was a recent graduate of the journalism school from the University of Sierra Leone, when he became the acting editor of the newspaper For Di People. The managing editor of the newspaper, Paul Kamara, was sentenced to prison for seditious libel in October 2004.

Attack and death For Di People and five other newspapers (The African Champion, The Independent Observer, The Pioneer, The Pool, and The Progress) had rented the building at 1 Short Street in Freetown for over a decade when the landlord died and his wife, Fatamata Hassan Komeh, inherited the building Within a few months, Hassan Komeh (who was a new MP for the SLPP) began efforts to try and evict the newspapers, reportedly for publishing reports critical of the government.

The attack left Yansaneh unconscious After a week, the Sierra Leone Association of Journalists (SLAJ) filed a complaint with the Ombudsman of Sierra Leone who filed the complaint directly with the Parliament. As a result of injuries to his kidneys as a result of the attack, Yansaneh died on 28 July 2005 at a hospital in Freetown, the capital of the country.