{"id":545,"date":"2006-09-06T13:52:00","date_gmt":"2006-09-06T19:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2006\/09\/richardson-heading-to-sudan-to-seek-journalists-release-from-prison\/"},"modified":"2006-09-06T13:52:00","modified_gmt":"2006-09-06T19:52:00","slug":"richardson-heading-to-sudan-to-seek-journalists-release-from-prison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2006\/09\/richardson-heading-to-sudan-to-seek-journalists-release-from-prison\/","title":{"rendered":"Richardson heading to Sudan to seek journalist&#8217;s release from prison"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http:\/\/photos1.blogger.com\/blogger\/5892\/2386\/1600\/RichardsonWatch.18.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"http:\/\/photos1.blogger.com\/blogger\/5892\/2386\/200\/RichardsonWatch.17.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a>Gov. Bill Richardson will travel to <st1:country-region st=\"on\"><st1:place st=\"on\">Sudan<\/st1:place><\/st1:country-region> on Thursday to meet with Sudanese President Lt. General Umar Hassan Ahmad Al-Bashir and urge him to release journalist Paul Salopek and two colleagues on humanitarian grounds.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><o:p> <\/o:p><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">The three were arrested a month ago and charged with espionage, passing information illegally, and writing false news. Salopek, a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, is on leave from his job as foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and was on a freelance assignment for National Geographic magazine when he was arrested.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><o:p> <\/o:p><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Salopek lives in <st1:city st=\"on\">Columbus<\/st1:city>, <st1:state st=\"on\">N.M.<\/st1:state>, with his wife, Linda Lynch, who will accompany <st1:city st=\"on\"><st1:place st=\"on\">Richardson<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> on the trip.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><o:p> <\/o:p><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">\u201cPaul Salopek is clearly not a spy.  He\u2019s my constituent, and he is a talented and respected journalist who was attempting to do his job telling the story of the people, culture and history of the sub-Saharan region known as the Sahel,\u201d <st1:place st=\"on\"><st1:city st=\"on\">Richardson<\/st1:city><\/st1:place> said in a news release. \u201cI will encourage President al-Bashir to recognize the essential role of journalists and a free press and release Paul and his colleagues on humanitarian grounds.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><o:p> <\/o:p><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Salopek\u2019s wife and Chicago Tribune Editor-in-Chief Ann Marie Lipinski first appealed to <st1:city st=\"on\">Richardson<\/st1:city> for help, and he met last week with <st1:country-region st=\"on\">Sudan<\/st1:country-region>\u2019s Ambassador to the <st1:country-region st=\"on\">United States<\/st1:country-region>, Khadir Haroun Ahmed, in <st1:place st=\"on\"><st1:city st=\"on\">Washington<\/st1:city>,  <st1:state st=\"on\">D.C.<\/st1:state><\/st1:place>, to discuss Salopek\u2019s detainment. The two have been friends since 1996, when <st1:city st=\"on\">Richardson<\/st1:city> was a congressman from <st1:state st=\"on\"><st1:place st=\"on\">New Mexico<\/st1:place><\/st1:state> and negotiated the release of three Red Cross workers, an American pilot and others who were held by Sudanese rebels. Ahmed was his translator.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><o:p> <\/o:p><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">This week the Sudanese government formally invited <st1:city st=\"on\">Richardson<\/st1:city> to travel to <st1:country-region st=\"on\"><st1:place st=\"on\">Sudan<\/st1:place><\/st1:country-region> and meet with the president, according to the news release. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Gov. Bill Richardson will travel to Sudan on Thursday to meet with Sudanese President Lt. General Umar Hassan Ahmad Al-Bashir and urge him to release journalist Paul Salopek and two colleagues on humanitarian grounds. The three were arrested a month ago and charged with espionage, passing information illegally, and writing false news. Salopek, a two-time [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}