British Filmmakers beaten tortured and electrocuted in Sudan

A British filmmaker has described how he was kidnapped in Sudan and then passed to the Sudanese government, who took him to a notorious prison in the capital Khartoum and tortured him, accusing him of being a spy.

Mr Cox entered Sudan from Chad with a Sudanese colleague, Daoud Hari, aiming to investigate allegations that the Sudanese government had used chemical weapons on civilians in the Darfur region .

But in an account of his ordeal, Mr Cox wrote in the Guardian newspaper that once inside the country the filmmakers were informed that they were being hunted after the government put a bounty on their head.

They were kidnapped by an armed group near the Jebel Marra mountains and chained to a tree in the desert for a week before being transferred to Kobar prison in Khartoum, where they faced torture.

In a statement , Mr Cox said:

Daoud and I experienced first-hand the lengths that the Sudanese government will go to stop any independent reporting on what is happening in Darfur.

Our time in prison gave us a terrifying insight into the brutal tactics of the Sudanese security forces, and it also revealed the arbitrary and heavy-handed way any perceived opposition or anti-government criticism is dealt with.”

Channel 4 News editor Ben de Pear said:

We sent Daoud and Phil to investigate allegations of human rights abuses in Sudan, but we never thought that they themselves would fall victim to these horrific abuses. They were beaten, tortured and electrocuted, simply for being journalists.”

BBC