Sudan papers say reports on 'spy' claims blocked

KHARTOUM (AFP) - Sudanese intelligence agents have blocked the publication of articles alleging they bugged the offices of a leading opposition politician, editors said on Monday.

Four Sudanese newspapers attended the late Sunday press conference by the Islamist opposition leader Hassan al-Turabi but none reported on his allegations.

Adil al-Baz, chief editor of Al-Ahdath, said his paper received an order "not to publish it."

Another independent daily, Al Tayar, put Turabi's allegations on its front page but an intelligence officer arrived during printing and ordered them not to distribute, said the paper's chief editor, Osman Mirghani.

"Then we offered to change the first page... but he refused, and he decided to take all the copies," Mirghani said.

However, the editor thought the censorship was not linked to the Turabi article but to his paper's recent articles about alleged government corruption.

At his news conference, Turabi produced three short sets of wire, each connected to a tiny metal or plastic box. He said they were bugging devices found in the electrical sockets of two meeting rooms at his Popular Congress Party headquarters on Wednesday.

"I accuse the security service directly," said Turabi, a former mentor who became one of President Omar al-Bashir's fiercest critics.

Turabi said the party searched and found the bugs after they became suspicious of how intelligence agents claimed to have obtained an internal party analysis about Sudanese politics.

They falsely accused the party of planning a coup, in combination with a popular uprising, he said.

"We don't have many secrets," and have already announced the goal of removing the regime, Turabi added.

"Our plan is not to remove it by military means but through a popular revolution."

Sudan's intelligence services have a reputation for visiting newspapers at night to demand that articles be removed, or barring their distribution altogether.