Region | Sudan

Editor held for story on government salaries

A Sudanese newspaper editor said on Saturday he had been detained after publishing an article criticising high salaries paid to officials in south Sudan's ministry of legal affairs.

  • Reuters
  • Published: 23:29 October 11, 2008
  • Gulf News

Juba, Sudan: A Sudanese newspaper editor said on Saturday he had been detained after publishing an article criticising high salaries paid to officials in south Sudan's ministry of legal affairs.

Nhial Bol, editor and owner of the daily Citizen newspaper, speaking by phone from a police station in the south's capital Juba, said he had been accused of defamation and spreading false information.

Freedom of the press was guaranteed under a 2005 peace deal that ended more than two decades of civil war between north and south Sudan and set up a semi-autonomous southern government.

But editors and journalists in both north and south Sudan complain of continued censorship, print-run seizures and harassment.

The south's government has long admitted corruption problems but no one has yet been charged.

Earlier this year, south Sudan's president Salva Kiir froze payments to staff at the ministry of legal affairs after receiving a report about their salary levels.

"They've been after me for a while," Bol said, referring to government officials he said had been angered by the coverage.

"They should be opening a case against the newspaper, not arresting me. This is a civil case. I should not be in prison."

"In the north there is dictatorship and in the south corruption is spreading like wildfire," he added.

Bol was briefly arrested in August, after running stories on allegations of corruption in other parts of the south's government.

Bol said police officers had told him he would be in prison for at least three days and it was still unclear whether he would have to appear in court.

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