Khartoum drops suing two doctors of Doctors Without Borders

The Sudanese authorities decided to drop "spying" accusations and "disseminating wrong information" against employees from Doctors Without Borders organization it had detained since three weeks.

The organization's official in Khartoum, Keny Glouk, said that the Sudanese foreign minister Mustafa Othman Ismael handed over the organization a copy of instructions given by the minister of justice Ali Muhammad to drop the accusations because of the "good deeds the organization carried out in Darfur," and because of the desire of the Sudanese government to improve relations with relief organizations.

The Sudanese government had detained the director of the organization in Sudan, Paul Forman, and its coordinator in Darfur, Vance Hodet, after he had published a report in March this year in which he said that he is documenting 500 rape cases reported by women in the district situated to the west of Sudan, during a period of four and a half months in which the UN secretary general Kofi Annan based in his report about Sudan before the UN Security Council.

However, the Sudanese authorities accused Doctors Without Borders of lying and of not giving evidence on what it stated, while the organization refused to publish names of women who alleged they were raped of fears that they will be victimized and in order to preserve "the privacy code" linking the doctor to the patient.