Sudanese security bans journalist from travelling abroad

March 25, 2016 (KHARTOUM) – Security agents at Khartoum airport Friday have prevented journalist Faisal Mohamed Salih from travelling to the United Kingdom (UK).

“Security authorities at Khartoum airport at 5:00 am (local time) Friday prevented me from travelling and told me that my name was placed on the travel ban list and my passport was seized,” he said.

He told the non-governmental Journalists for Human Rights (JHR) network that the security agents at Khartoum airport asked him to report to the NISS headquarters on 26 March.

Salih, a strident critic of Sudanese President Omer al-Bashir and his regime’s human rights abuses, has won the Peter Mackler Award for courageous and ethical journalism in 2013.

He was the former editor-in-chief of Al-Adwaa daily and a columnist for several other publications. He is also director of programs at Teeba Press, a non-government organisation that trains journalists in Sudan.

On Wednesday, NISS also banned member of the central committee of the Sudanese Communist Party (SCP) Siddiq Youssef from travelling abroad.

Youssef was heading to Cairo and from there he intended to travel to Geneva to attend the discussion of Sudan annual report at the UN Human Rights Council later this month.

Sudan’s National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS) continued to ban opposition leaders and political and civil society activists from travelling abroad.

Last November, NISS prevented the member of the Civil Society Initiative (CSI) Babiker Mohamed al-Hassan from travelling to Addis Ababa.

Also, security services at Khartoum airport last December banned SCP leader Mohamed Mokhtar al-Khatib and SCP member Tariq Abdel Majid besides the leader of a Democratic Unionist Party’s faction, Jala al-Azhari from leaving to Paris and confiscated their passports.

(ST)