NISS delays distribution of El Jareeda newspaper again

For the second day in a row, agents of the National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) affected the print runs of El Jareeda and El Sayha newspapers with a new tactic to delay newspaper distributions.

El Jareeda was not allowed to appear in Sudan on Monday morning, similar to the confiscation of the newspaper on Sunday morning. The NISS agents have given no explanation to the editors of the newspapers.

A journalist said that the security service held onto the confiscated copies until 8am. This means that the print-runs were released too late for distribution to Khartoum and other Sudanese cities.

A new tactic by the NISS in recent weeks has been to delay the distribution of newspapers from the printing presses. Newspapers released after 8am are unable to be distributed to outlets in Khartoum or other cities, and are at risk of not being bought anymore.

El Jareeda Editor-in-Chief Ashraf Abdelaziz told Radio Dabanga that the losses of his newspaper have amounted to SDG200,000*($7,105).

On Sunday he explained that he alleges the reason for the confiscation to be a report about the authorities’ preventing the editor-in-chief of El Masadir newspaper from attending a meeting between the Egyptian President Abdelfattah El Sisi and President Omar Al Bashir in Khartoum.

Media in Sudan are constantly subjected to attacks on press freedom. The country is ranked at the bottom of the World Press Freedom Index by the global monitoring institution Reporters Sans Frontières.

* Based on the indicative US Dollar rate quoted by the Central Bank of Sudan (CBoS)