Sudan Court Acquits Top Journalist Who Criticized President

A Sudanese court on Thursday threw out the case against a prominent journalist who said it was inappropriate for President Omar al-Bashir to call South Sudan's government an "insect".

Journalists and press freedom advocates said the case against Faisal Mohammed Salih was symptomatic of a worsening government attack on critical voices over the past year, as tensions with South Sudan escalated following the South's independence in July.

Ahead of his trial, Salih told Agence France Presse he was unofficially detained by state security agents for almost two weeks before being charged criminally with a minor offence.

"The accused came to the security service office for 12 days and they didn't give him food or water," said the judge, according to an AFP reporter in the court.

The officers "endangered his life, and because of that I find him not guilty," the judge added.

"It's a great day," Salih told AFP by telephone after the verdict at a criminal court in Khartoum North district. "I knew that there was no strong case."

The judge stated that "in Islam, our task has to be to take care of people," Salih said.

His legal troubles began after Al-Jazeera television asked him to comment on a speech in which Bashir called the government of South Sudan an "insect" that must be eliminated.

Salih said the comments were inappropriate for a leader, and security officers said he had insulted the president.

With no legal basis to lay a formal complaint, they ended up charging him with refusing to report to their office, which could have earned him a month's jail and a fine upon conviction, he said.

Sudan and South Sudan came to the brink of all-out war in April as the South seized Sudan's main oil field of Heglig for 10 days and the north launched air strikes over the border.

Bashir's speech came at the height of the Heglig crisis.

Salih and other press freedom advocates say journalists have been banned from writing, newspapers have been confiscated after printing and some have been ordered to suspend publication under a government crackdown.

Salih is due to return to court on June 11 in another case stemming from a column he wrote early last year. He had called for a "serious investigation" into a female activist's allegation that she was raped in custody.

"The security (service) sued me for defamation," he said, adding that two female journalists were briefly jailed and fined for similar writings, while two others are still on trial along with him.