Darfur student activist held in Sudan capital

On Sunday, members of Sudan’s National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) detained a Darfuri student activist from inside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Lawyer and human rights activist Abdu Ahmed said that Darfur student Kamal El Zein went to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Khartoum on Sunday to register a university degree. He was told there was a problem with the national service registration, and was then handed over to members of the NISS political section.

The lawyer demanded that the student be charged or released immediately.

Last week, The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders* and the African Centre for Justice and Peace Studies (ACJPS) issued a joint statement that since the beginning of the current popular revolt in December 2018, 30 human rights defenders have been arrested and all, except one, remain detained to date.

The Darfur Bar Association has called for the immediate release of 32 Darfuri students of the University of Sennar, who were arrested on December 23 and stand accused of being ‘a sabotage cell’ of the Abdelwahid faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM-AW).

The students were detained by agents of the National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) at their rented house in Sennar. The group was later shown on state television and presented as a cell belonging to the SLM-AW. According to their accusers in the NISS, they were allegedly “trained in Israel by the Mossad secret service and returned to Sudan to carry out acts of sabotage”.