Butchered for blasphemy
The chief editor of the Sudanese independent daily, Al-Wifaq has been found dead a day after being abducted by unknown gunmen on Tuesday.
Mohammed Taha Mohammed Ahmed was abducted from his home in the east of Khartoum and his body was discovered in another part of the city on Wednesday, according to an Interior Ministry official who was speaking anonymously as he was not authorized to speak to the media.
Police Maj. Gen. Mohammed Nagib al-Tayeb said that several suspects were arrested for alleged involvement in the crime that he described as “alien to the Sudanese traditions and ethics.” He did not give additional details about those taken into custody or the circumstances of the arrests.
According to Reporters Without Borders, Mohamed Taha had been decapitated and his body had been found n Kalakala district about 25 kms south of the capital.
Taha was convicted of blasphemy in 2005, on the basis of a complaint by a fundamentalist group, Ansar al-Sunnah. The article that offended them related to a more than five-centuries-old Islamic manuscript entitled “the unknown in the life of the prophet” and which cast doubt on the prophet’s ancestry.
Sunday 10 Sep 2006 | Paul | Sudan
