KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Women held a vigil outside the Sudan security service headquarters on Sunday, calling for the release of sons and other men arrested during a series of protests inspired by Egypt's uprising, witnesses said.
In another part of the capital, security officers prevented journalists from gathering to take part in a second protest against the arrest of colleagues, a Reuters witness said.
Officers detained five TV cameramen and photographers trying to cover the event, the witness added.
Young men have held a series of small protests across north Sudan in recent weeks against price rises and human rights abuses. Some websites and protesters also called for regime change.
Police, armed with batons and tear gas, have moved in quickly and arrested participants, witnesses say. So far the protests have not gained the momentum seen in Tunisia or Egypt, Sudan's northern neighbour.
More than 20 women, carrying photographs of the arrested men, gathered quietly outside the national security headquarters on Sunday morning, a Reuters witness said. Officers made no immediate move to arrest them.
Sumaya Habbani, the wife of prominent opposition figure Mubarak al-Fadil, told Reuters she would not leave the rare public vigil until her two sons were freed.
Sudanese journalists had also planned a protest on Sunday against the arrest of colleagues during the same demonstrations.
Scores of police and plainclothes security officers took up positions outside the headquarters of the National Press Council, the media regulator, preventing anyone gathering there, according to a Reuters witness.
Sudanese government officials have played down the domestic protests saying they are isolated acts by students inspired by foreign activists and websites.
Sudan's government declined to comment on uprisings in Tunisia and neighbouring Egypt while they were taking place, then moved quickly to congratulate the protesters after they succeeded in ousting their leaders.
"We salute the Egyptian youth. A second greeting to the Egyptian youth, and a third greeting to the Egyptian revolution," Sudan's president Omar Hassan al-Bashir told a crowd in Sudan's Northern state on Sunday, in a speech broadcast on state television.
(Writing by Andrew Heavens; editing by Mark Heinrich)
