Resistance Committee members detained as Sudan’s GIS given power of arrest

Sudanese security forces have embarked on a campaign of detentions in Khartoum, Omdurman, and Khartoum North (Khartoum Bahri), and raided the homes of members of the resistance committees in the capital and other states since Saturday. The head of the ruling junta, Gen Abdelfattah El Burhan, has temporarily given the General Intelligence Service (GIS), successor of the infamous (now disbanded) National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS)*, the authority to arrest civilians during the State of Emergency.

The Resistance Committees Coordination in Omdurman reported that Abdallah El Nour, a member of the Karari Resistance Committee, was held by a force wearing civilian clothes on Sunday and took him to an unknown destination.

In Khartoum North, the resistance committees of the densely populated neighbourhoods of El Haj Yousef, said that three of its members, Diaeldin Salah, Osama Hashem, and Awad Abdoun, were held at dawn on Monday.

Emergency Lawyers said that the police have taken blood and urine samples from activists detained on December 25, in a move to fabricate accusations for them. The lawyers said that they are in the process of submitting legal process against these illegal measures.

Zeinab El Sadig, a member of the Political Bureau of the National Umma Party (NUP) and daughter of diseased NUP President El Sadig El Mahdi, NUP President before he died of COVID-19 in November last year, said that her party has completed a road map regarding the current political crisis, and that she has presented it to a number of allies of the Forces for Freedom and Change and the Sudan Liberation Movement breakaway faction led by Minni Minawi. All political forces will be contacted in this regard.

She explained that one of the most important things mentioned in the proposed document is the development of the Constitutional Document and the definition of a partnership framework with the military, as well as a review of some points in the peace agreement signed in Juba.

In another political development, the establishment of the National Movement Forces was launched in Khartoum on Monday. It will be headed by El Tijani Sese, former chairperson of the Darfur Regional Authority, which was dissolved in 2016.

This new alliance includes political forces, native administration leaders and Sufi leaders, and works in coordination with the Forces of Freedom and Change-National Charter Group. Among the goals of the new alliance, as announced, is stopping foreign interference, and conducting a dialogue to achieve consensus.

* The National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) was one of the most infamous and feared organs of the Al Bashir dictatorship, that acted ruthlessly against any political dissent. The NISS was officially disbanded in July 2019 by constitutional decree “restructuring the security apparatus, to cope with the political change in the country”. The decree amended several articles of the National Security Act of 2010, in order to restructure the NISS, to adjust its competences, and to change its name to the General Intelligence Service (GIS). The new intelligence service is no longer authorised to detain people or carry out search operations.