The director of the Mauritian newspaper that published photographs of the murdered Michaela McAreavey, has been arrested.
A spokesman for the Mauritius Police said Gen Imran Hosany was detained at 7.30am at his home in the capital Port Louis this morning.
He is currently being questioned in relation to the publication of the photographs in the Mauritian Sunday Times at the weekend. This publication has no connection to Irish or British publications with the same name.
Acting on orders from the police commissioner, detectives yesterday searched the premises of the newspaper. No arrests were made and no items were recovered, said a police spokesman.
The newspaper, a small title founded late last year, carried a black-and-white picture of the Co Tyrone teacher, taken after she was murdered, on its front page last weekend. It also published a number of other images showing her injuries and the hotel room where her body was found.
The publication of the photographs drew an angry response from the Government and was described by the McAreavey and Harte families as “reprehensible and repugnant”.
The newspaper yesterday apologised for publishing the photographs with Gen Hosany saying the motive for doing so was not sensationalism but rather “to recall that such a heinous crime remained unpunished”.
Two former staff of the hotel in which Ms McAreavey was killed were found not guilty of her murder last week. The Mauritian DPP has indicated that a new inquiry into the killing could be opened if there were new leads to justify it.
The McAreavey and Harte families said in a statement yesterday that if the Mauritian Sunday Times editor was, as he claimed, “fully co-operating with the police, then the best and most obvious form of apology would be to tell them how his newspaper came into receipt of these photographs. This would be a start to taking some degree of personal responsibility”.
They added: “The hurt this man and his newspaper have caused over the past 48 hours cannot be undone. As an editor he made a calculated decision to use photographs and images that no responsible media outlet would have touched.”
“[The editor] further exacerbated his actions by printing an inexcusable editorial in a feeble attempt to justify what was wholly unjustifiable,” the families said.
The prime minister of Mauritius has this week written to the Garda Síochána and PSNI to invite them to assist in investigating the murder of Ms McAreavey.
