Sunday, September 12, 2004

Sudanese prisoner dies while in custody - Sudan arrests editor, cracks down on press

Seems there is more to below copied reports and what is going on in Eriteria (ck spelling) than meets the eye. Maybe there has been a new but foiled attempt to topple present regime in Khartoum.

Today Khartoum flipped out over a news article that appeared in a Sudanese daily newspaper. Thousands of copies were ordered to be pulped to bury the article. The editor of a daily newspaper was arrested and accused of reporting "mis-information" that was harmful to the present regime in Khartoum.

Whatever the story was about, Khartoum did not want it circulated. Pity it didn't get leaked on the internet - I did google but can't find anything. One report said a newspaper had photographs of the arms that were found by Sudanese forces - maybe it was that - or the recent arrests and the deaths of one or two detainees through possible torture. Here are a copy of the reports to file here, add notes to, or bin later.

Sudanese prisoner dies while in custody

A Sudanese opposition party said Saturday a prominent political prisoner died from torture while in custody.

The Popular Congress Party, led by Hassan al-Turabi, said Shamseddine Idris died Saturday. He was one of 33 party activists arrested Wednesday on charges of plotting subversive acts aimed at toppling the government.

There was no independent information on the circumstances surrounding the death of Idris, who was a student leader in Khartoum. But the Secretary General of the Popular Congress Party, Abdullah Abu Fatima, said in a news conference a number of the party's detainees were being tortured while in custody.

Abu Fatima also denied any links to the weapons authorities said they seized Friday in a village north of the capital. He dismissed as a fabrication accusations the arms belonged to his party.

Sudanese authorities have carried out a wave of arrests and raids during recent days in search of weapons they say were supplied to the opposition party by neighboring Eritrea. They say the group intended to use the arms to carry out sabotage aimed at toppling the regime in Khartoum.
http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=aadf8a6b3d578e79
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Sudan arrests editor, cracks down on press

Khartoum, Sudan, Sep. 12 -- Sudanese authorities Sunday arrested an editor and cracked down on the press, confiscating newspapers and censoring articles.

Sources at Alwan daily newspaper said its chief editor, Hussein Khoujli, was arrested Saturday night, while its front-page main story was censored by authorities and replaced with a non-political article.

Editors at al-Sahafa daily newspaper also tens of thousands of that paper's copies were confiscated after it was printed Saturday night, allowing it to go to the press only after having removed an article.

They did not say what the article contained.

All Sudan's 12 newspapers Sunday refrained from mentioning the news conference held by the opposition Popular Congress Party, which accused authorities of fabricating accusations against the party and saying was trying to obtain weapons from Eritrea to overthrow the regime.

Direct news media censorship was imposed for the first time in 2000, but President Omar Bashir lifted the censorship last year.

Journalists said state censorship seemed to have returned during the weekend.

http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=32f3c3522026efb3
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Islam online: Darfur's War of Definitions

The late Palestinian professor Edward Said once wrote that human rights are not “cultural or grammatical things, and when they are violated, they are as real as anything we can encounter.”

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