Five aid workers arrested in Sudan: Norwegian NGO

OSLO, Jan 6 (AFP) — Five aid workers have been arrested by Sudanese authorities in the troubled Darfur region but two of them have since been released, the Kirkens Noedhjelp (Norwegian Church Aid) humanitarian organization said.

Norwegian Church Aid’s Bjørg Mide is to travel to Sudan in early January 2005, to take up leadership of the international ecumenical relief effort in Darfur. (NCA).

In the Sudanese capital Khartoum, authorities said the five were suspected of having shot a documentary inside rebel camps to back up allegations of genocide and rape in the west Sudanese province.

“Two of them have been released on bail, two others are about (to be freed) and we are working in the legal area to obtain the release of the fifth,” a Sudanese engineer who was arrested carrying unspecified documents, Atle Sommerfeldt, secretary general of the organization, told AFP in Oslo.

He added that Kirkens Noedhjelp could not confirm or deny any accusations of possible wrongdoings “because we don’t know them”. The reason for their detention is not known, he said.

Sommerfeldt only identified the five as three Sudanese, a Kenyan and a Briton.

Sources in Sudan said their controversial equipment comprised a computer, a digital camera and 11 CD-Roms. They allegedly recorded testimony by women who said they had been raped and pictures of a mass grave.

The public Sudanese Media Center said the five were being investigated for crimes against the state and plotting.

The conflict in Darfur flared in February 2003 when rebels from minority tribes launched a revolt against Khartoum, demanding an equal share of national development.

That conflict has so far claimed 70,000 lives and displaced 1.6 million people, amid rampant human rights violations.

The southern war has killed at least 1.5 million people and displaced four million others since it erupted in 1983.