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Omar al-Bashir, Sudan's president, has ordered an immediate end to state censorship of the media ahead of the country's first elections in almost 25 years.
In a decree carried by the official Suna news agency on Sunday, al-Bashir put an end to "pre-censorship", the system where newspapers are screened by state censors before being available to the public.
"We had a meeting with President al-Bashir. He ordered a stop to censorship from today," Ali Shomo, the chairman of Sudan's national press council, the state regulator, said.
Editors gave the announcement a cautious welcome, but some said they would still face pressure over sensitive stories.
Press freedom
Sudan's journalists have complained of regular censorship, saying security officers often visit their offices to check and sometimes remove articles ahead of publication, despite constitutional guarantees of a free media.
Editors say print-runs have been seized and titles shut down, particularly when writers tried to tackle controversial subjects such as the Darfur conflict and the International Criminal Court's war crimes case against al-Bashir.
Fadlallah Mohamed, the editor of independent al-Khartoum newspaper, said the move was "important" ahead of the national election due in April 2010 under the terms of a faltering 2005 peace deal that ended the country's north-south civil war.
"Censorship is contrary to free press in Sudan," he said.
"We are expecting the general election. It is very important to have a free press in such circumstances."
Code of conduct
Sudan, Africa's largest country, boasts around 30 titles in both English and Arabic, and spanning the country's political spectrum.
In June, parliament passed a law guaranteeing "freedom of the press", but while the law was meant to guarantee freedoms, in practice, censors continued to exercise their powers.
Sunday's announcement came two weeks after newspaper editors said they sat down with officers from Sudan's national security service to sign a code of journalistic conduct.
The document, seen by news agencies, included broad promises for newspapers to be fair in their reporting, to respect religious and racial differences and to obey the law.
Sudanese reporters have been arrested during rare public protests against censorship and have won the support of rights bodies including the US-based Committee to Protect Journalists and France's Reporters Sans Frontieres.
The press law, and the lifting of censorship in Sudan, apply only to the written press and not to television media, which is largely controlled by the state.
PHOTO CAPTION
Sudan's President Omar al-Beshir, pictured here on September 20, 2009, announced the immediate lifting of state censorship on the press, meeting a key demand of the media ahead of Sudan's first elections in almost 25 years.
Al-Jazeera
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