Khartoum police chief: ‘Social media panic prompts kidnapping reports’

The police chief of Sudan’s Khartoum state says that 17 cases of kidnapping have been filed over the last two weeks ‘as a result of the panic of residents reacting on rumours spread on social media’.

Maj. Gen. Ibrahim Osman, pointed out that after the police investigated these reports, they were found to be normal missing person cases, the official Sudan News Agency (SUNA) reports.

General Osman was referring to rumours circulating on social media of gangs who murder people in order to harvest their internal organs for sale to transplant patients. http://www.snopes.com/horrors/robbery/kidney.asp

He said that there is no truth to these rumours as harvesting and transplanting human organs is a highly complicated business.

Yesterday he promised the Khartoum Legislative Council to reveal the perpetrators of the murder of Adiba Faroug whose body was found floating in the White Nile in March.

He pointed out that “the police record in investigating these mysterious crimes is good”.

He said that the threat of what he called “outlaw groups” has completely been deterred because of the presence of newly established forces.