Sudan frees four detained foreigners Sudan has released four foreigners seized last month along its disputed border with South Sudan. Thabo Mbeki led mediation talks between the neighbouring countries. Photograph: Jon Hrusa/EPA Sudan has released four foreigners detained near the border with South Sudan after weeks of heavy clashes, according to officials. Sudan said it had arrested the four - a Briton, a Norwegian, a South African and a South Sudanese - last month after accusing them of illegally entering an oil-producing border area to spy for South Sudan. South Sudanese officials denied the allegations, saying the men were working with the UN and aid groups clearing mines and had got lost in the remote territory. "We thank the president for their release," the former South African president Thabo Mbeki, who has been mediating between the two sides, told reporters at a press conference with the four in Khartoum. Sudan's defence minister confirmed the release. The arrests in April came after weeks of fighting along the 1,100-mile contested border that brought the two Sudans closer to all-out war than at any time since the South seceded. The southern nation, which became independent in July under a 2005 peace deal that ended decades of civil unrest, had seized the disputed Heglig oil area earlier in April but then withdrew under heavy international pressure. The neighbours are at loggerheads over a series of issues including the exact position of the border, the status of citizens in one another's territory and how much the landlocked South should pay to export its oil through Sudan.