Darfur Bar Assoc: NISS tortured miners to death for ‘cooperating with Radio Dabanga’

The Darfur Bar Association (DBA) alleges that according to an eyewitness, two men who died after being tortured in the detention cells of the National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) in El Abbasiya Tagali, stood accused of cooperating with Radio Dabanga.

The DBA also said it would call on all national forces, parties, and civil society organisations to join a protest march to the buildings of the NISS in case the Interim Military Council has no ability to release the many Darfuris held in NISS cells.

On Tuesday, the DBA said in a statement that the delay in the release of Darfuri political prisoners is intended by some of the elements of the National Congress Party to create confusion and unrest among the people of Darfur.

In the statement, the Darfur lawyers pointed to the fate of Mohamed Zakariya, who was detained at the Rasarees mine in El Tartar in El Tadamon in southern Sudan in December 2018, says he was exposed to torture in the cells of the National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) in El Abbasiya in South Kordofan and in the large NISS facility in Khartoum North “near the Shendi bus station”.

He stressed that he had nothing to do with the armed movements.

Arrested for ‘cooperating with Radio Dabanga’

In a statement on Tuesday, the Darfur Bar Association (DBA) reported about the hearing session they conducted with Zakariya on Monday that Fayez Abdallah and Hasan Tulga, with whom he was held, lost their mind before being killed inside the cells of the security apparatus in El Abbasiya Tagali where they were being tortured.

He said that the two of the slain were workers in Rasarees mines arrested on the pretext that they cooperate with Radio Dabanga and the Sudan Liberation Movement led by Abdelwahid El Nur (SLM-AW), and  that they are working for the benefit of international intelligence agencies against the country. He said they are not related to any armed movement and had no contact with any national or international organisation or any embassy and do not know politics or media.

Radio Dabanga can attest that neither of the Abdullah nor Tulga were known to our newsroom. Radio Dabanga receives calls constantly from across Sudan, and it is no secret that for many years, the NISS has actively targeted anyone suspected of corresponding with Radio Dabanga.

For many years, in their quest to suppress independent media in Sudan, the NISS have used listening to Radio Dabanga as a pretext for suspicion and arbitrary arrest.

Detained students in poor health

Zakariya himself, originally from in Central Darfur, was doing odd jobs to sustain his family in Nierteti, pointed in the hearing to the deterioration of the health situation of the Darfuri students who were arrested in El Doroshab in Khartoum North where one of them was killed during the raid, especially a student called Abdelraouf, who was transferred several times out of the prison for alleged treatment. Zakariya fears for his life.

The DBA expressed its “utmost concern” about the health condition of Mahdi Abdelhadi, Zeinelabdin Hasan, Motasem Abulgasem, Suleiman Abaker, Mustafa Ishag, and two other students of El Zaeem El Azhari University, and University of Khartoum student Abdelrauf, being held in the cells of the security apparatus in Khartoum North since January 4.

Hundreds of detained Darfuris along with hundreds of war prisoners have not yet been released, according to the Darfur Bar Association (DBA). “The failure to release all Darfuris who are still detained for their alleged political activities is the same discriminatory behaviour as the ousted regime’s,” the DBA said in a press statement on Monday.