Sudan agrees to release US journalist
Sept 09, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — Sudan’s president agreed to release American journalist Paul Salopek after meeting with New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson.
Richardson said Friday he will pick up the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the Chicago Tribune, his Chadian driver and his interpreter in the war-torn Darfur region on Saturday. The three have were arrested there on charges of espionage.
Salopek, who has a home in New Mexico, was on assignment for National Geographic magazine when he was arrested last month and accused of passing information illegally, writing “false news” and entering the African country without a visa. His trial was set to begin Sunday.
Richardson said he told President Omar al-Bashir that releasing the three “was the right thing to do.”
“I was surprised and overwhelmed that it would happen so soon,” Richardson told The Associated Press in telephone interview. “I made a strong pitch on humanitarian grounds and after 30 minutes of my pitch, he agreed to the release.”
The Sudanese government confirmed the release without additional comment.
Salopek’s wife, Linda Lynch, who traveled to Sudan, said she spoke with her husband and told him the news of the release. “He was delighted and relieved and teased me a bit about our meeting this way in Sudan,” the wife said.
Tribune Editor Ann Marie Lipinski, who also made the trip, said Salopek told her Friday after learning of his release that he was “dancing in the moonlight.”
“It’s been a long three weeks since we learned of Paul’s disappearance. We are elated by today’s developments,” she said in a written statement
Chris Johns, editor in chief of the National Geographic magazine, said: “We are overjoyed that Paul Salopek and his Chadian assistants are being released, after their monthlong detainment in Sudan,
“We are incredibly grateful to the wide circle of individuals and organizations that helped in the effort to secure Paul’s release. And we are especially appreciative of the personal role Gov. Richardson took in the process that has to led this outcome.”
In 2001, Salopek won a Pulitzer for international reporting for his work covering Africa. In 1998, he won a Pulitzer for explanatory reporting for his coverage of the Human Genome Diversity Project.
Richardson, a former congressman, U.N. ambassador and energy secretary during the Clinton administration, secured the release in 1996 of three Red Cross workers, including an Albuquerque pilot, from Marxist rebels in Sudan.
Richardson also has traveled to Iraq, North Korea and Cuba to gain the release of Americans held prisoner. Last year, he went to North Korea at the communist government’s invitation.
(AP/ST)