British humanitarian worker with MSF detained in Sudan

AMSTERDAM, May 30, 2005 (AP) — Sudan’s government detained a British aid official whose agency had angered it with a report detailing hundreds of cases of rape in the troubled Darfur region, the Amsterdam office of Medecins Sans Frontieres said Monday.

“This is an obvious attempt to intimidate humanitarian groups working in Sudan,” Susanne Staals, spokeswoman for the Amsterdam office of Medecins Sans Frontieres, said of Monday’s arrest of Paul Foreman, who headed the group’s Dutch mission in Darfur.

“We’re outraged,” Staals said.

Sudanese authorities could not immediately be reached for comment on Foreman’s arrest. In the past, they have said the MSF report on rape was untrue.

The Sudanese government had been angered by report MSF, also known as Doctors Without Borders, published in March on rape in Darfur.

The Netherlands’ MSF branch reported that its doctors working in Darfur had collected medical evidence of 500 rapes over 4 1/2 months. The report said more than 80 percent of the victims reported that their attackers were soldiers or members of government-allied militia.

“They clearly were not happy with the report, but we haven’t heard anything from them directly until today,” Staals said.

The Darfur conflict erupted when rebels in the western region took up arms against what they saw as years of state neglect and discrimination against Sudanese of African origin. The government is accused of responding with a counterinsurgency campaign in which government-backed Arab militiamen known as Janjaweed committed wide-scale abuses — including killings, rape and arson — against the African population.

More than two years of conflict in Darfur has killed at least 180,000 people, many from war-induced hunger.