Opposition leaders say Sudan security blocking their media interviews

January 10, 2011 (KHARTOUM) – Sudan’s National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS) have been preventing international media from interviewing opposition leaders in the latest sign of political tension sweeping the North.

The leader of the dissolved Umma Reform and Renewal Party (URRP) Mubarak Al-Fadil told Sudan Tribune that NISS agents stopped his interview with the U.S. Arabic-language TV channel Alhurra.

He said that NISS officers cut the satellite link and ordered the organizers to evict him from the studio without providing an explanation.

Al-Fadil further said that authorities prevented the BBC Arabic TV from interviewing the Sudan People Liberation Movement (SPLM) leading figure in the North Yasir Arman.

“They don’t want us to speak about the consequences and the dangers ahead after South Sudan breaks away,” he said.

Observers say that the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) is growing increasingly intolerant of opposition parties especially as the latter hold them responsible for the likely secession of Southern Sudan.

The independent Al-Sahafa daily newspaper reported today that authorities stormed the home of Ismail Al-Azhari, the late Prime Minister and leader of the United Democratic Unionist Party (UDUP) in the 60’s, to prevent party supporters from placing a black scarf as expression of sorrow for the South going away.

A DUP official by the name of Esam Hasabu told Al-Sahafa that the officers tried to arrest Al-Azhari’s daughter Samia and the party’s media official Abeer Osman but they back down for lack of incriminating factors.

Hasabu said that CNN reporter at the scene was expelled along with other international media representatives present.

In Khartoum, sources told Sudan Tribune that NISS agents arrested BBC reporter Rasha Kashan and her crew after they finished filming a talk show but were later released.

(ST)