Sudan arrests second aid worker for rape report

By Opheera McDoom

KHARTOUM, May 31 (Reuters) – Sudan arrested a second aid worker from the Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) aid agency on Tuesday over a report on hundreds of rapes in the troubled Darfur region, the agency said.

Lina Gustin, an MSF nurse, listens carefully to a Sudanese woman severely injured by a bullet when Janjaweed militia attacked her village. (MSF).

Vince Hoedt, Darfur coordinator for MSF Holland, said he was under arrest and police were escorting him to Khartoum. It was not clear if he was charged with the same offences as the country director who was arrested and released on bail on Monday.

“I have been officially arrested but there are no official charges as yet,” he told Reuters from Darfur. He was at the airport waiting to be transported to Khartoum, where he would meet the authorities.

An MSF spokesman in the Netherlands told Reuters Hoedt saw his arrest warrant but could not read it because it was in Arabic.

MSF Holland country director Paul Foreman, who reported to authorities on Tuesday, is charged with spying, publishing false reports and undermining Sudanese society, MSF said in a statement.

The attorney-general told Reuters the maximum penalty for the charges was three years in prison followed by permanent expulsion from the country.

MSF Holland published a report in March detailing about 500 cases of rape over a period of 4 1/2 months in Darfur, where a rebellion has raged for more than 2 years.

The violence has killed tens of thousands and forced more than 2 million from their homes.

The report contained anonymous accounts by victims of their ordeals, including being held and raped repeatedly for several days, beaten and even arrested.

Pregnancy out of wedlock is illegal in Sudan, where Islamic sharia law is in force.

Rights group Human Rights Watch said in a statement on Tuesday the Sudanese government should be arresting war criminals in Darfur, not aid workers.

“This is a perfect illustration of how far the Sudanese government is prepared to go to silence criticism and deny its own responsibility for massive atrocities in Darfur,” said Peter Takirambudde, Africa director for Human Rights Watch. ”

A U.N.-appointed commission of inquiry found evidence of mass rape during the rebellion in Darfur. The documents are with the International Criminal Court, which has been instructed by the U.N. Security Council to investigate alleged crimes against humanity in the remote west of Sudan, the first such referral.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour in Geneva called on Sudan to ensure human rights monitors and aid workers were “permitted to work freely and without fear of retaliation”.

Targeting aid workers will do a disservice to th people of Darfur and “draw attention away from the real criminals, those who continue to rape, kill and pillage with impunity”, she said.

The top U.N. envoy in Sudan Jan Pronk told reporters in Khartoum he deplored the arrests. He said MSF was the most essential Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) working in Darfur.

But he said he did not think the government was targeting aid agencies: “There are forces, military forces, police forces, intelligence forces who are hitting at some specific NGOs for some specific issues but I do not see an overall trend of the government against the NGOs,” he said.

Human Rights Watch said at least 20 aid workers have been arbitrarily arrested in Darfur over the past six months.

(Additional reporting by Niclas Mika in Amsterdam)

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To read MSF report on rape please go to The Crushing Burden of Rape Sexual Violence in Darfur (PDF file)