Al-Wifaq pro-government daily resumes publication
May 3, 2009 (KHARTOUM) – Al-Wifaq, the newspaper suspended by order of General Salah Abdallah Gosh, resumed publication Sunday.
The editor of the pro-government daily had written in favour of killing a northern leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, Yasser Arman, prompting a government crackdown that Arman said was intended to be temporary.
The Arabic-language newspaper is sometimes labelled an Islamist-leaning publication close to President Omar Hassan al-Bashir’s National Congress Party, the ruling party.
Salah Gosh, head of the country’s intelligence apparatus, ordered the closure, according the government-sponsored Sudan Media Centre website.
The editor of the paper, Isaac Ahmed Fadlallah, also was temporarily banned from writing for the other paper in which he publishes his work, al-Ra’ed.
Last month, Sudanese authorities executed nine Darfuri men who pleaded innocent for the 2006 murder of al-Wifaq’s then owner, Mohamed Taha Mohamed Ahmed. It was said that the editor was killed for printing an article casting doubt on the ancestry of the prophet Mohammed.
(ST)