Sudan newspaper remains suspended pending retrial

KHARTOUM, Sept 14 (AFP) — The English-language daily Khartoum Monitor remains suspended although a Sudanese appeal court overturned a ruling to suspend its licence, the newspaper’s chief editor said Sunday.

Alfred Taban told AFP that the paper was due to reappear on Saturday. But a prosecutor ordered the paper not to publish until “investigation into cases under consideration is over.”

A court of appeal scrapped a Khartoum criminal court ruling which imposed fines on two Monitor journalists and withdrew the paper’s licence, the editor said last week, while deciding the case would be retried.

The paper was shut down on July 12 when the journalists were fined 500,000 pounds (about 200 dollars) each, a sum which Taban has said they would demand to be refunded.

The Monitor was accused of publishing articles which violated Sudan’s penal code. The authorities had lodged a complaint over an interview published last year with a former minister from southern Sudan criticising the government.