Sudan: Court lifts ban on newspaper

Sudan's highest court has allowed a leading newspaper to resume publishing, nearly five months after the authorities banned it from printing, the newspaper's editor said on Monday.


Sudan's powerful National Intelligence and Security Service had suspended the independent Al-Tayar newspaper in December after it published a series of editorials criticising the government over subsidy cuts on fuel and electricity.

The newspaper challenged the group in the country's Constitutional Court, which ordered that the ban on the daily be lifted.

"We will resume publishing in the coming days as we have the court's order," said Al-Tayar's editor-in-chief Osman Merghani.

Al-Tayar was banned along with another newspaper, Al-Jarida, in May 2015 over reports that it had published articles about child abuse.

The publications were later allowed to resume printing, but Al-Tayar was again banned in December.

Journalists in Sudan complain of harassment and the country regularly ranks near the bottom of world press freedom indexes.