Arab Journalists Union protests arrest of five Sudanese journalists

The Arab Journalists Union received with deep anxiety news of the arrest of five journalists from Sahafa newspaper by the Sudanese security authorities. Those arrested include Kamal Hasan Bekheet, the paper's editor-in-chief, under pretext of publishing a poem by a Sudanese poet which the security authorities saw as encouragement for the opposition.

Salah El-Din Hafez, secretary general of the union, said this procedure, which led to delaying the newspaper's publication due to the arrest of its leaders, forms a frank violation of press freedoms and threatens the national reconciliation atmosphere which all the Arab and Sudanese parties seek to achieve.