Sudan Frees 2 Journalists Working for Foreign News Agencies

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/22/world/africa/sudan-journalists-reuters-agence-france-presse.html

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Sudanese journalists working for Reuters and Agence France-Presse, seized by the Sudanese authorities last week for covering protests about rising prices in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, were freed on Monday, the news agencies reported.

The two journalists were among the last of 15 detained by Sudan’s National Intelligence and Security Service to be released.

Sudan’s government provided no explanation for why it had detained them or what charges, if any, they might have faced.

But press advocacy groups said many Sudanese journalists and newspapers had been warned not to report on the protests, which were seen as an embarrassment to the government of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir.

The United States, which has recently tried to improve relations with Sudan, was among those who had criticized the arrests. Heather Nauert, a State Department spokeswoman, rebuked the Sudanese authorities last Friday for having prevented the journalists from doing their jobs.

The released Agence France-Presse journalist, Idris Ali, was quoted by the news agency as saying that he was “at home now with my family” and had been treated well in detention.

Reuters said that its reporter, Khalid Abdelaziz, also had not been mistreated, and that “we are extremely relieved.”

Restrictions on the press have intensified in Sudan over the past few years, and journalists have often been harassed. Reporters Without Borders, a press-advocacy group based in New York, has called the repression part of a broader move among autocratic governments to muzzle voices they consider to be a threat.