‘Grave violations and systematic sexual harassment against minors in Omdurman’

A committee in Sudan who defend those affected arbitrary and unlawful detention, allege that members of the Sudanese police committed grave violations and systematic sexual harassment against minors in Omdurman.

The committee said in their statement on Sunday, that a group of policemen on board four-wheel drive vehicles in February held two boys, Warrag Hisha and Zaki Abdelmajid, from the street in Omdurman, for no apparent reason.

They tortured them severely by beating, kicking, tearing their clothes, and wounding them in various places on their bodies with a knife. They were completely stripped of their clothes and had to roam naked through the neighbourhoods of Omdurman until El Arbaeen Street.

The Committee said that dozens of other minors and young people have been detained and were imprisoned at Omdurman Central Police Station, until they were released in the middle of the night.

It also said that a group of policemen detained Mustafa Jawda (13) at the end of last December, at which point they tortured and harassed him before releasing him without legal course.

Empowerment Removal Committee members still in detention

The families of the detained Empowerment Removal Committee* members have repeated their demand for their immediate and unconditional release. They appealed to the national and international community to put more pressure on the coup authorities to drop the charges against them and expedite their release.

In a statement from the families yesterday, they said their “detention is purely political without evidence, evidence or presumptions linking them with the charges that it described as fabricated”.

They also added that the authorities did not follow the legal procedures of informing the detainees of the charges against them, nor did they investigate them about the charges held against them, and stated that their families and lawyers are still not allowed to see them.

* The full name of the committee is the Committee for Dismantling the June 30 1989 Regime, Removal of Empowerment and Corruption, and Recovering Public Funds. It was established by the government of Abdallah Hamdok at the end of 2019 with the aim to purge Sudan of the remnants of the Al Bashir regime. Empowerment (tamkin) is the term with which the ousted government of Omar Al Bashir supported its affiliates by granting them far-going privileges, including government functions, the setting-up of various companies, and tax exemptions.