A court in the West African state of Cameroon has sentenced an editor to a six-month suspended sentence for publishing pictures allegedly showing a minister involved in homosexuality, the Cameroon Tribune newspaper said on Friday.

Georges Gilbert Baongla, editor of the scandal sheet Le Dementi, was found guilty of offending public morals and obscene publication. He was also fined 500 000 CFA francs ($1 000).

The court had described as "noble" the defendant's campaign against homosexuality, but deplored his methods, the Cameroon Tribune quoted Baongla's lawyer as saying.

In Cameroon, six teenagers have been jailed without trial since July 30 on charges of homosexuality following police use of torture to make other youths "name names" of their gay friends in Douala, the country’s largest city with a population estimated at more than 2 million.

In Cameroon, homosexuality is a crime punishable by up to five years in prison.

Three adolescents had been taken to the police commissariat in Douala’s Bonassama district because they had allegedly stolen something from the house of the parents of one of them.

But while the young trio was at the commissariat, one of them received a text message on his cell phone that police said indicated he was involved in a homosexual relationship, according to a report prepared by Sebastien Mandeng, human rights coordinator for Alternatives Cameroon, the group IGLHRC’s Nana had founded.

"The police, who used a mixture of coercion, torture, and promises of liberty, forced the adolescents to admit their homosexuality and sign a transcript of that admission— but also to reveal the identity of the six other gay teenagers, who were then arrested," said Mandeng’s report. "The police ambushed those who‘d been named — they called the six boys and got them to come to a rendezvous, and when they showed up they were arrested."