Sudan arrests two journalists for incitement

Mar 9, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — Sudan arrested two journalists after they published a story which reported on an offer to pay for the assassination of a top U.N. envoy, an employee of their newspaper said on Thursday.

The independent al-Watan paper this week quoted the head of the pro-government student’s union, Mohamed Abdallah Sheikh Idriss, as saying the body would pay $100,000 for the head of U.N. envoy to Sudan Jan Pronk.

“The editor-in-chief (Sidahmed Khalifa) was arrested yesterday,” said Khaled Sati, managing editor of al-Watan. He added the authorities had accused Khalifa and the journalist who wrote the article, Mustafa Abu al-Azaim, of incitement.

Al-Azaim was also detained.

The African Union, which has 7,000 peacekeepers in Darfur, is expected to decide on Friday whether to ask the United Nations to take over monitoring a shaky ceasefire in a region where tens of thousands have been killed and millions displaced.

Sudan’s government — which has already agreed to a U.N. force for a separate conflict in the south of the country — has objected to a U.N. mission for Darfur and waged a domestic media campaign characterising it as a planned foreign invasion.

A spokesman for the student’s union denied Idriss had offered a ransom for Pronk’s head. The National Press Council was not immediately available for comment.

(Reuters)