Opposition criticises method of detention in Sudan

The National Consensus Forces claimed that the Sudanese security service has changed its semi-detention strategy before the kick-off of the National Dialogue on Saturday. “Detainees are summoned to the office from morning until evening and their properties are confiscated.”

The alliance of opposition parties downplayed the pledges President Omar Al Bashir made during the conference, to provide political freedoms and release detainees. “These are false and represent previous promises that have not been implemented,” said Mohamed Diauldin, one of the leaders of the NCF, at a press conference at the Communist Party's headquarters in Khartoum on Monday.

He claimed that the security service now orders people who are in so-called semi-detention to report at their offices in the morning until the evening on a daily basis. In addition, their vehicles and mobile phones are confiscated. “It is twisted. They are told to return the next morning.

“These are arrests, rather than detentions,” Diauldin said. He said that a large number of youth are being detained by the security apparatus in this manner. Siddig Yousif, a prominent NCF member, agreed with his statements.

Yousif: “These new methods of detention are fraudulent by filing complaints against detainees on charges that neither would allow their release, nor take the accused to trial.”

He said that 19 people were arrested in March 2014, taken to Kober Prison, and have been in the prison awaiting their trial until this day. 27 people, he said, were arrested later and added to this number.

Pointing to Al Bashir's pledges in the Friendship Hall on Saturday, Yousif said “in practice, there is no release of the detainees or freedoms in this country”.

Late August, a number of Baath Party and Sudanese Congress Party leaders were summoned to report to the NISS in Khartoum every day in semi-detention. Both parties had launched an anti-government campaign in public places in Sudan.