KHARTOUM, 7 September 2006 — A Sudanese newspaper editor who was kidnapped by unknown armed men was found dead yesterday, a day after he was reported snatched from outside his home in the capital Khartoum, an Interior Ministry source said. Mohamed Taha was arrested last year and his Al-Wifaq paper closed for three months after it published a series of articles questioning the roots of the Prophet Mohammed, which were condemned by Sudan’s powerful Islamists.
“His throat was slit,” a source at the Khartoum morgue where Taha’s body was taken said. Local papers quoted Taha’s family as saying a group of men bundled him into a car outside his home in north Khartoum and sped off toward central Khartoum on Tuesday. “His family filed a report saying he was kidnapped last night by unknown armed men,” an Interior Ministry official said. Kidnapping of civilians is common in Sudan’s war-torn western region Darfur and was a feature in the south during large-scale conflict there, but is very rare in the capital.
Dozens of Sudanese journalists gathered at the Khartoum morgue, some sobbing and others with lowered heads. The morgue was guarded by heavily armed police, and the reporters said they feared for the future of journalism in Sudan. “This is very dangerous. It is the start of something terrible. It is an attack on freedom of the press but it will not succeed,” said journalist Maysaun Abdel Rahman, who works for a newspaper aligned with Islamist leader Hassan Turabi.
Meanwhile, Sudanese opposition groups were set to challenge Khartoum yesterday with a second protest against price increases for basic goods after security forces violently dispersed similar demonstrations a week ago. The organizers, dozens of whom have been arrested in the past week, vowed they would not stop until their democratic right to protest peacefully was granted to them.
“Today we intend to deliver our statement to the presidential palace,” said Mariam Al-Mahdi, spokeswoman of one of the largest opposition parties, the Umma Party. Mariam said senior police and state security officials had called opposition leadership to their headquarters on Tuesday on the pretext of planning the route of the protest, which has been denied permission to go ahead. “But it was a trick. Instead they threatened us that they would hit us and kill us and the blood would run in the streets if we went ahead,” she added.
State security officials were not immediately available to comment. Khartoum recently raised prices of goods like petrol and sugar to fill a hole in the 2006 budget. Last Wednesday, riot police fired teargas at banner-waving demonstrators who took to the streets of central Khartoum against the increases. Lorries filled with heavily armed soldiers drove around the capital in a show of force.
