Darfur activist detainees were tortured: lawyer

The lawyer representing activists released last Thursday said they were tortured while in detention since last October. Mr. Mohamed Abdullah Ad-Duma, the head of the defense team, disclosed that the nine detainees were ill-treated, severely beaten and tortured. He did not give further details.Mr. Ad-Duma was speaking at a symposium in Khartoum Bahri on Sunday at the headquarters of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). Security service personnel were present in the audience, which prompted other attendees, particularly DUP youth members, to shout angrily at them, accusing them of abusing Darfuris. Mr. Osman Omer Asharif, former minister of justice and one of the DUP leaders, requested the security personnel to write down what was said at the event and report it back to their leaders. He called for the unconditional release of the remaining four detainees. He said that the nearly three months of incommunicado detention was ‘psychological torture’ not just for the detainees but also for their families. Other party leaders likewise condemned the arrest of the Darfurians.

A member of the defense team, the lawyer Ms. Halla Abdelhamid, in a message on Radio Dabanga said that people should not focus on the detainees per se, but on Darfur on the whole. She urged families of the detainees to consider them as heroes. She also urged them to continue to convey their message that had caused them to be arrested.

The four remaining detainees are: Mr. Jaafar Sabki, editor of Al Sahafa newspaper; Mr. Abdulrahman Gasim, an activist and lawyer in the field of human rights; Mr. Abdelrahman Adam Abdelrahman, an editor of Radio Dabanga; and Ms. Kawthar Abdelhaq Omer.