Rhino: Security authorities in Omdurman arrested journalist Saleh Mohamed Abdullah, editor-in-chief of the online newspaper Al-Dawahi, at the intersection of Al-Wadi Street and 30th Street on Saturday while he was sitting for a cup of tea at a café on the main street and interrogated him for hours before releasing him.
“I was having a cup of tea at 8:00 a.m. in a café before going to Baaboud health center in the ninth district of Omdurman,” the journalist told Radio Dabanga from Omdurman. “While I was having tea, three regular forces came and ordered tea and smoked a bingo cigarette, and I felt suffocated by the bingo smoke, so I went out of the room to the glade in front of the place,” he added: (I started browsing my mobile phone and writing my daily diary, then I was surprised by a soldier standing in front of me holding a Kalashnikov rifle and wearing a military uniform with a civilian shirt and two heavily armed soldiers next to him. He asked me what I was writing, asked me for my ID card, and asked me if you are an employee and where you work, I told them that I do not work, indicating that they asked him to go with them to a building on Al-Thawra Street in Al-Wadi, confirming that he was interrogated for more than four hours.
Journalist Saleh Mohammed Abdullah confirmed that he was threatened after revealing his journalistic identity. He was forced to open his mobile phone, and all incoming and outgoing social media messages and photos, voice calls, videos inside the device, and deleted messages and photos were examined in the trash can.
After interrogating him for hours, the intelligence official told him that the photos in the mobile phone’s memory constituted irrefutable evidence that he was collaborating with the Freedom and Change Forces, the Central Council, now known as the Coordination of Civil Democratic Forces (Taqaddam), which is accused of being the political arm of the RSF.
“Saleh” said: “Although I denied these accusations, the military information official, who personally re-examined my mobile phone again, and the intelligence official, who identified himself as the official in charge of the “30” Al-Thawra district in Wadi, reviewed that the photos (a photo of hitting the major Halfaya link between the cities of Omdurman and Khartoum Bahri, a map of Jebel Moya, a photo of a dead woman under a ten tree, and other photos) constitute irrefutable evidence, confirming my involvement as a journalist in threatening national security.
The journalist, Saleh Abdullah, denied all the accusations against him, explaining that the photos were found and circulated on all social media. “After evaluating the evidence and statements and reviewing all the information written in my notebook, they released me and told me, “If we find you again in these places, your head will be broken with a rifle”,” he said.
