Sudan Foreign Ministry summons Unamid head over Darfur rape allegations

Sudan has summoned the acting head of the UN-African Union Mission in Darfur over reports that claim that government troops carried out a mass rape in a village in North Darfur on 31 October, a foreign ministry official said in Khartoum on Friday. He claimed that the reports by Radio Dabanga are based on sensationalism. A Sudanese legal expert has listed several behaviours of the government and other evidence “that porve that the crime in Tabit occurred”. The under-secreatry of the Foreign Ministry, Abdallah Hamad El Azraq, spoke to the press after a meeting with Abiodun Bashua, the Joint Special Representative of the Unamid on Friday morning in the ministry’s Information Administration. “We summoned the chief of Unamid to clarify the situation,” El Azraq stated. He criticised Radio Dabanga, which reported on 2 November that many women and girls were collectively raped and men were beaten by Sudanese soldiers in Tabit two days before. “It is not the first time that Radio Dabanga fabricates charges against Sudan.” The reports have no credibility, he stressed, and are “based on sensationalism”, which even reached the Unamid. Darfur Prosecutor investigates case“The [UN-AU] mission complains about these allegations,” the under-secretary said, which he dismissed as “lies from Radio Dabanga”. “I told the special envoy that the case is under the investigation of the Special Prosecutor for Crimes in Darfur.” The prosecutor, Yasir Ahmed Mohamed, has already made an inquiry committee for this purpose, El Azraq confirmed. He added that once the government had completed its inquiry, it would “take a decision which will reach anyone the investigation shows has made a mistake in this matter”. According to witnesses yesterday, the Sudanese military in Tabit have arrested 26 men in an attempt to discover who informed Radio Dabanga and Al Arabiya TV about the reported mass rape. The army also transferred about 150 soldiers from the local garrison to El Fasher, they said. ‘Soldiers supported Unamid patrol’ Under-secretary El Azraq declared that the Unamid investigation team was accompanied by government forces in Tabit last Sunday because “they wanted to support the Unamid in performing its job… This is in accordance with the procedures that the UN and the AU agreed upon”. The military spokesman Colonel El Sawarmi Khaled Saad told reporters at a news conference last Sunday that he dismisses the accusations against the army, calling them “impossible”. He justified that Unamid was denied access to Tabit because it did not receive permission to do so. The ministry official lashed out at the United States following a reporter’s question about the position of the US in the matter. The US urged Sudan to grant unrestricted access to Tabit on Wednesday. “The US have killed thousands of people in Iraq and Afghanistan, and even more in Vietnam at the time. It does not possess any moral grounds to speak about human rights.” ‘Behaviour’s proof that rape happened’ Ali Mahmoud Hassanein, a legal expert and head of the Broad National Front, considered that Unamid “failed when it rushed to deny that [the mass rape of about 200 women] was committed”. The president of the political forum, that opposes the rule of the National Congress Party, stressed that the mission’s conclusion about the reports in Tabit is “basically useless” because it happened in circumstances that take false statements into account. He pointed to eight “clear and fixed evidences, proving the occurrence of this incident”: 1) ‘The confirmation that one of the soldiers disappeared and was thought that to have gone to Tabit, so the military searched the homes to find the soldier. During this time minor girls, some single, and married women were raped. 2) An army officer was sent to apologise to the villagers which proves the crime was committed. 3) The government forces’ denial of a Unamid verification patrol from accessing the area on 4 November after hearing about the incident, is evidence that there is something they wanted to hide. 4) The government forces’ meeting with the villagers and threatening them that if they spoke up about the case, they would be subjected to oppression by the military. 5) The government created an atmosphere to the villagers that scares them to talk about the incident, and only then it allowed Unamid to visit Tabit. The team was not alone, but accompanied by military and security personnel, who stayed while the investigators questioned the villagers. This intimidation led to the interviewees to reply “nothing happened”, to protect themselves. 6) Unamid did not object to the presence of the forces, while it witnessed it had an impact on the villagers. 7) The testimony of journalist Alladin Aldafaina who went to Tabit with the Unamid team: “No one may disclose information about how the army entered houses, and what happened inside those houses. But neither has anyone denied that soldiers entered the houses and imposed their own authority.” 8) A native committee’s inquiry on the ground, during which it secretly questioned 60 witnesses, who confirmed that soldiers committed rapes.’ Radio Dabanga reported almost two weeks ago that members of the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) invaded Tabit, 60 km south-west of El Fasher city, and raped many women and girls in the town, in the night of 31 October. The husbands and men were dispersed and forced to stay outside. According to a Sheikh in Tabit, about 200 women were raped, including minors. File photo: Women in El Fasher, capital of North Darfur (Unamid) Related: Tabit men arrested, army transfers troops accused of North Darfur rape (13 November 2014) Sudan army filmed Unamid mass rape investigations in Tabit (12 November 2014) USA joins call for full access to Tabit, North Darfur (12 November 2014) ‘Sudan army has no right to dismiss Darfur rape reports’: activist (11 November 2014)