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Sudan Pardons and Frees 2 Catholic Priests

The release on Monday of the Reverend Hilary Boma and the Reverend Lino Sebit - and at least 18 others - was seen as the government's latest attempt to reconcile with opposition forces.

Father Sebit said in a telephone interview from Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, that interrogators killed three other prisoners and beat the clerics. ''They beat us with whips, sticks, anything that they could get,'' he said.

The priest added: ''One of the security men told me, 'The pope will not come to Sudan to help you' and 'The Roman Catholic Church is a foreign church, not a Sudanese church. It is a church of white people.'''

The priests were arrested with as many as 20 other men in August 1998 and charged with setting off bombs on June 30, 1998, the ninth anniversary of the coup that brought the National Islamic Front to power. No one was injured in the bombings, which the authorities maintain were part of a plot to mar anniversary celebrations.

The Sudanese government enforces a strict Islamic code that has aggravated a 16-year civil war between the Muslim north and the black African south, whose inhabitants practice traditional and Christian beliefs. The Catholic Church, the largest Christian denomination, has been particularly harassed, with churches bulldozed and priests routinely detained.

When Father Boma and Father Sebit were charged with offenses that, under the Islamic code governing Sudan's legal system, could lead to their crucifixion, critics and independent observers suggested that their widely publicized confessions had resulted from torture.

Father Sebit said that was so. ''We were very tired, almost dying,'' he said. ''We had no choice. If we said no, we were going to die.''