Former south Sudan rebels sue paper for libel

Nov 28, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — The southern partner in the Sudanese government, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), is suing an Islamist newspaper it says defamed the party in a report on a clash in Khartoum, two members said on Tuesday.

Five policemen and an SPLM soldier were killed in the incident in the Khartoum suburb of Jabel Awliya on Nov. 17. It led to exchanges of gunfire throughout the suburbs.

The Islamist paper al-Intibaha said three senior members of the SPLM in Khartoum had planned the incident.

“The case is opened against the al-Intibaha paper because they published information that the SPLM was behind the attack in Jabel Awliya,” SPLM official Bol Ring told Reuters.

Ring and two other senior SPLM officials had opened three separate cases of libel against the paper, which named them as plotting the attack, the officials added.

Another party official, Deng Goc, said the paper was trying to incite north-south tensions in Khartoum.

The former southern rebels joined a coalition central government last year after a January 2005 peace deal ended Africa’s longest civil war in southern Sudan.

(Reuters)