Sudan expels a Canadian contributor to the Monitor

While she admits that she worked for her final month, January, without accreditation, she says it was only after she started pursuing a story about Sudan's arms-manufacturing industry that she received a call from National Security agents requesting a meeting. At the meeting, the agents told her that she must leave Sudan by Monday.

"I was never given any written expulsion order, despite my repeated requests," says Aly, who had been detained twice before during her year in Sudan. "I was simply harassed, and was counselled by someone in government that if I did not leave I would be arrested. I was followed, intimidated into leaving the country, and escorted by national security all the way onto the tarmac to board the airplane. The reason they gave me was that I was asking about arms. But they told me the line they would use publicly was that I didn't have my work papers."

The government of Sudan continues to insist that Aly's expulsion is merely an immigration matter.

"It has nothing to do with her work as a journalist," says an official at the Sudanese Embassy in South Africa. The embassy official requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak on behalf of the Sudanese government. "It is something related to her passport, to her visa, and to the immigration department."

A Sudanese government spokesman, contacted by phone in Khartoum, claimed to be unaware of the specifics of Aly's case, and referred questions to the Immigration Ministry, which could not be reached for comment at press time.

Aly's treatment is typical, say Sudanese journalists, including Al-Haj Warraj, editorial department chief for the Khartoum-based newspaper Ajras al-Hureya.

"For the past nine months, we have had a security officer who reads all our reports and decides what we will print and what we don't print," he says.

Mr. Warraj was one of 60 journalists arrested in 2008 for protesting against censorship outside the parliament building in Khartoum. "You cannot speak about supporting the ICC. You can't speak or write about the suffering in Darfur. No one can criticize the military or the police, and since most of the atrocities are committed by the Army and the police in Darfur, you cannot talk about that."

• Our reporter could not be named for security reasons.

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