Sudanese paper ordered closed, two detained

May 17, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — Sudanese authorities have closed a leading independent Arabic newspaper and detained two journalists on defamation charges in a dispute over an editorial that ran on Wednesday, an editor said on Thursday.

Editorial director Abdel Rahman al-Amin of the al-Sudani newspaper, one of Sudan’s leading dailies, said the paper was ordered closed on Wednesday night after a columnist wrote a piece accusing the Justice Minister of lying about a court case.

Amin said the columnist, Osman Merghani, and the paper’s editor-in-chief, Mahjoub Erwa, had also been detained. He said they were expected to be released within several hours.

“Last night there was a decision issued to stop the al-Sudani newspaper for an unlimited period,” Amin said, adding that the paper would not retract the piece or apologise.

Justice Ministry officials were not immediately available for comment.

Amin said the paper had filed an appeal to the Justice Ministry to reverse the decision, and had filed a request with the country’s constitutional court to overturn it.

It was the second time since the start of the year that authorities had shut the paper, which says its readership has climbed to 100,000 since it reopened last year. It had been stopped from publishing in Sudan in 1994 under emergency law.

Authorities briefly closed the paper in February after it violated a decree not to report on the case of a murdered journalist, Mohamed Taha. Authorities said they did not want the investigation into Taha’s death to be jeopardised.

Taha, the editor of the private al-Wifaq daily, was kidnapped from his home by armed men last year and his decapitated body found the following day in a street in a south Khartoum suburb.

(Reuters)