Sudan: Deportation of JEM leader suspended pending appeal

The Constitutional Court in Khartoum has suspended the deportation from Sudan of the Vice-President of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), Ibrahim El Maz Deng pending consideration of this appeal.

Deng was released from Khartoum’s Kober Prison in October 2017 after seven years in detention. He was immediately transferred to the custody of the foreign police to be deported as he is legally deemed by the authorities to be a citizen of South Sudan.

In October last year, lawyers Nabil Adib, Kamal Omar, Saati El Hajj, and Abdelaziz Oshar filed a petition to the Constitutional Court against President Al Bashir's decision to deport Deng from Sudan.

In a statement after the constitutional decision, Kamal Omar said that the Constitutional Court had confirmed suspension of the deportation proceedings so as to consider the appeal.

The four lawyers said in the appeal that Deng was Sudanese before the secession of South Sudan and has a wife and children in Sudan.

They described the deportation decision as unjust and unfair and that Deng does not want to be stripped of the Sudanese nationality.

Deng and six colleagues were captured in West Darfur in 2010. They were charged under the criminal and anti-terrorism law and tried in Khartoum in 2011 by a special court called Court of Terrorism Act No.1 – a process the JEM branded as unfair.