Sudanese security agents seized the entire Saturday edition of a newspaper over an article about an activist who was detained in the run-up to the country's general elections, its editor-in-chief said. The National Intelligence and Security Service took the entire run of independent daily Al-Youm al-Tali from the printers late on Friday, Muzamil Abu al-Gasim told AFP.
"All copies of the newspaper's Saturday edition were seized by the security and intelligence apparatus," he said. Abu al-Gasim said the NISS told him the edition was confiscated because of an article he published the previous day about Sandra Kaduda, an activist who was held for three days.
Kaduda was driving to an opposition rally against the elections in the city of Omdurman on Sunday, the day before the polls started. The activist's family said the NISS had denied knowledge of her whereabouts but they accused its agents of detaining her. Kaduda was released on Wednesday and "found in very poor health and with signs of ill treatment," Amnesty International said.
The article in Al-Youm al-Tali had called for "the disclosure of the group that kidnapped the activist Sandra," Abu al-Gasim said. The independent daily's latest confiscation came after polling ended across most of the country in four-day general elections President Omar al-Bashir is widely expected to win.
Rights groups had accused his government of stifling media and civil society in the run-up to the vote. Abu al-Gasim said that the NISS had suspended his newspaper's publication for 21 days last year without giving a reason. NISS agents seized the entire print runs of 14 dailies on February 16, one of the widest crackdowns on the media in recent years.
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