Sudan junta releases 25 detainees – dozens remain in prison

The ruling Sudan junta has released 25 leaders of the Resistance Committees who were detained during the protests against the military coup, however leading members of the opposition Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC), the leaders of the suspended Empowerment Removal Committee (ERC), remain in detention.

This follows a pledge last week by the head of the ruling junta, Gen Abdelfattah El Burhan, to review the State of Emergency, and release political detainees ‘within days’, to prepare the atmosphere for dialogue.

However, on Thursday, the security forces arrested a prominent leader of the National Umma Party and took him to an unknown destination after he was summoned to the headquarters of the suspended empowerment committee.

Emergency lawyers said in a statement that in Khartoum state, the Soba prison authorities released about 25 of the detained revolutionaries, while 27 remain in detention, in addition to the detainees of the Empowerment Removal Committee and other detainees in the prisons of Debek in Port Sudan and Aba in El Gezira.