Sudan arrested a second aid worker from the Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) aid agency today over a report on hundreds of rapes in the Darfur region.
Vince Hoedt, Darfur coordinator for MSF Holland, said he was under arrest and police were escorting him to Khartoum. It was not clear if he was charged with the same offences as the country director who was arrested and released on bail yesterday.
An MSF spokesman in The Netherlands told Reuters Hoedt saw his arrest warrant but could not read it because it was in Arabic.
Sudan arrested and later released on bail the country head of MSF Holland, Paul Foreman, who returned to meet authorities today. MSF said in a statement the charges against him were spying, publishing false reports and undermining Sudanese society.
The attorney-general told journalists the maximum penalty for the charges was three years in prison and then permanent expulsion from the country.
MSF Holland published a report in March detailing about 500 cases of rape over four-and-a-half months in Darfur, where a rebellion has raged for more than two years.
The report contained anonymous accounts by victims of their ordeals, including being held and raped repeatedly for several days, beaten and even arrested.
A UN-appointed commission of inquiry found evidence of mass rape during the rebellion in Darfur. The documents are with the International Criminal Court, which has been instructed by the UN Security Council to investigate alleged crimes against humanity in the remote west of Sudan, the first such referral.