North Kordofan lawyers demand lifting of emergency measures

Human rights defenders in North Kordofan have called for lifting the State of Emergency in the state and the release of all detainees held under the emergency measures.

Lawyer Osman Hasan, who was released a week ago from the prison of El Obeid, capital of North Kordofan, said that “hundreds of people are being detained in El Obeid for three months or more while not being charged”.

He called for the immediate release of all detainees. “They are living in dire humanitarian and health conditions, and are deprived of exercising their legal rights to appeal or bail out.”

Hasan said that the State of Emergency which Sudan’s President Omar Al Bashir imposed in the state end 2017, “was for the purpose of collecting illegal weapons, but it has been used to suppress people with dissenting opinions”.

He pointed in this context to the arrest of football supporter Mahjoub Mohamed Ahmed on Wednesday.

After the supporter called the coach of his favourite team a “failed coach”, the military police arrested him immediately.

“Under the current State of Emergency, the angry supporter may have to languish for months in a crowded cell without charges,” the lawyer explained.

He said he considers the emergency measures in the state “an explicit violation of the Interim Constitution” and called for its “immediate abolition”.

Early January, Sudanese MPs said they would file a complaint against the State of Emergency imposed in North Kordofan and eastern Sudan’s Kassala to the country’s Constitutional Court.

Opposition parties in Kassala as well rejected the linking of the State of Emergency with Khartoum’s disarmament campaign, the drugs trade, and human trafficking.