Opposition’s newspaper confiscated in Sudan’s capital

The Sudanese National Intelligence and Security Service seized all copies of El Midan newspaper, the mouthpiece of the opposition Sudanese Communist Party, on Tuesday.

The NISS has not provided any reasons for the confiscation.

It is interesting to note that El Midan published an article about how President Omar Al Bashir departed from South Africa. Al Bashir escaped on Monday 15 June, while a court in the country had issued an order that barred him from leaving until a court ruling was made that afternoon on whether Al Bashir should be arrested and handed over to the International Criminal Court. The court ruled in favour of the prosecutors, but the President was already in his plane that flew from a military airport at that time.

Within the past three weeks, the NISS has confiscated the copies of seventeen daily newspapers from the presses. The total number of seized newspapers since the beginning of 2015 amounts to about 75.

The security service also suspended five daily newspapers, four of which have been allowed to return. El Akhbar will not resume publishing after 28 June, its management announced last Sunday, over what it called “financial problems”.

Last February, a total of fourteen daily papers were confiscated in one day.