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UPDATE SUDAN: Darfuri journalist released, now in USA
October 30, 2008
The Writers in Prison Committee of International PEN (WiPC) welcomes the release of Al-Ghali Yahya Shegifat, journalist and president of the Association of Darfur Journalists. Shegifat was released on 22 July 2008 after more than two months in detention, during which time he was subjected to severe ill treatment, and is now in exile in the USA.
Story Continued...
Al-Ghali Yahya Shegifat, 32, freelance journalist for the daily Ray Al-Shaab, and president of the Association of Darfur Journalists, was arrested in Khartoum on 14 May 2008 as part of a government crackdown in which over 200 individuals were detained. He had previously been detained and reportedly treated poorly by national security agents on 12 May. Following his second arrest, he was held incommunicado for two weeks, a lawyer reportedly managing to visit him at the end of May.
Shegifat was finally released two months later on 22 July following international pressure, including from the USA where a relative of Shegifat’s is resident. During his detention, Shegifat was reportedly beaten, shackled in stress positions in overcrowded cells, deprived of medical attention, food and sleep, and burned with cigarettes during interrogations.
The WiPC did not report on Shegifat’s release previously as he was receiving death threats and feared for his safety in Sudan. In October he traveled to the USA, where he is now receiving medical treatment and has claimed asylum.
Background
The individuals arrested at the same time as Shegifat were reportedly accused of supporting the armed opposition group, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), which has been fighting Sudanese government forces in Darfur since 2003 and launched an attack on Khartoum for the first time on 10 May. The arrests were understood to have been arbitrary, made on the basis of people being or appearing to be from the Darfur region or on suspicion of having sheltered JEM members. Shegifat and the other detainees were feared to be at risk of torture and extra judicial killing. One of the detainees reportedly died in detention on 19 May as a result of internal bleeding caused by severe injuries.
See the following alert from Amnesty International for more information:
http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/AFR54/026/2008/en/2549ff8b-2b74-11dd-845e-0fffaa32a89c/afr540262008eng.html