Sudanese authorities confiscated all 20,000 copies of the March 15, 2016, edition of the daily newspaper Al-Sudani, according to press reports. Agents of the National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS) appeared at the newspaper’s printers in Khartoum on the evening of March 14 and seized all copies of the daily, which had just been printed and was being prepared for distribution. Security forces took the copies away in an armored vehicle.
Security officers did not provide a reason for the confiscation, according to a Facebook post by Journalists for Human Rights, a Sudanese press freedom group. CPJ was unable to reach Al-Sudani staff directly.
Al-Sudani was one of 14 newspapers whose print editions were confiscated by the NISS in September 2015. CPJ has documented the seizure of newspapers as part of a pattern of direct censorship by Sudanese authorities, which also block websites critical of the government.