PDnEWS

Hartford Courant photojournalist Bradley E. Clift got more than he bargained for this May when a trip to photograph the humanitarian crisis in the war-torn Darfur region of the Sudan landed him in jail on charges of spying.

Clift was detained by the Sudanese government and spent more than two weeks under house arrest. The ordeal has taken an emotional toll on Clift, a photojournalist with 25 years of experience. Clift now worries that governments?like the one that arrested him as well as the Bush administration?are perfecting the art of controlling the press.

Clift set out for Darfur with a pledge from the Catholic Bishop's Council in Sudan to help him document the camps for internally displaced people (IDP) who are in dire need of food aid and medical supplies. When The Courant decided not to back his trip, citing a lack of funding, Clift decided to go on his own time and his own dime, as he had done in Somalia in 1992 and with other humanitarian crises.

Clift had a visa to enter the country, but he failed to obtain either a photographic permit from the Sudanese authorities or a travel permit to work in Darfur. Clift says he wouldn't have been granted such permission had he asked in the first place.

The first sign that he was in trouble came when an undercover security officer stopped him from taking pictures in a refugee camp just outside the town of Nyala. "Paperwork was never the issue [in his detention]," Clift maintains. "It was about not wanting me to shoot in the neglected camps, the ones the government wasn't even allowing aid agencies to service."

After four days of interrogation, the Sudanese authorities charged Clift on four counts: making war against Sudan, spying against Sudan?both punishable by death?entering Nyala illegally and taking photos without permission. At a hastily conducted trial, a police colonel stood up in court and said, "You are considered a spy, and we intend to prove your guilt and see to it that you hang."

Friends in Sudan urged Clift to find an escape route, but he had few options. The compound in which Clift stayed during his arrest had no electricity, so he kept a diary by candlelight while agonizing about the horrors that were going undocumented right outside.

"What you want, what you need, what the world needs to see is happening right outside your compound and you can't have it," Clift says. "That has a psychological impact on you. But what really has a psychological impact is that people want to do away with you because of what you do. The only other people who can relate to that are police and the military."

Clift was finally granted release after the U.S. State Department intervened, and perhaps some political pressure from the United Nations. (Clift says a full accounting of his experience and how he won release cannot be explained without endangering the lives of people still living in Sudan.)

Since his return, Clift has experienced signs of post-traumatic stress. He says he's had a tough time reconnecting with friends and colleagues who had no idea of what he had been through. He contemplated quitting the paper to devote his time to relief efforts in Sudan, but has now decided to continue shooting for the paper. He is currently planning an article on his experiences in Darfur based on the diary he kept during his arrest and the more than 300 photos he managed to smuggle out of the country, to be published in The Hartford Courant and sibling papers The Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune.

Weeks after his return, the bitterness Clift feels over his treatment in Sudan is still evident in his voice. Clift says now more than ever, American news organizations need to take a stand on the important issues of our time, profits be damned.

"What we need is multiple voices and unfortunately what we're getting in American media is so homogenized because so many papers are owned by so few [companies]," Clift says. "I think it would be nice if journalists were on the right side of history, and here's our chance."

A selection of Clift's photos can be seen at <www.pdnonline.com>.