Lawyers renew demands for Sudanese opposition leaders’ release

The defence team of Faroug Abu Eisa and Amin Mekki Madani sumbmitted a letter to the Sudanese Office for Prosecution of Crimes against the State in Khartoum on Friday. On Thursday morning, about 100 lawyers had submitted a Petition to the Office.

The defence lawyers urge the prosecution to look into earlier requests and memoranda regarding the detention of Abu Eisa and Madani.

El Muiz Hadra, the spokesman for the defence team, told Dabanga that the prosecutor’s office informed them they will receive a reply within three days.

In the petition, the 100 lawyers, headed by Omar Abdelaati and Nabil Adib, demand the cancellation of the juridical proceedings against the opposition leaders and their immediate release.  

Abu Eisa, head of the National consensus Forces (NCF, a coalition of opposition parties), Madani, chairman of the Sudanese civil Society Initiative, and Farah El Agar, legal consultant of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North, were detained by security officers in their homes in Khartoum on 6 December, a day after they had returned to Sudan from Addis Ababa.

In the Ethiopian capital, Abu Eisa and Madani had signed the Sudan Appeal, a political communiqué, together with the Umma Party, and the allied rebel movements. In the communiqué, the united opposition forces call for the ending of the civil wars in the country, the dismantling of the one-party system, and the rebuilding of Sudan based on democratic principles and equal citizenship. The signatories agreed that if a peaceful regime change cannot be achieved by a broad national dialogue, it should be enforced by a popular uprising.

The detainees were held incommunicado until 22 December, after which they were transferred to Kober Prison in Khartoum North. The National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) had charged them with “undermining the constitutional order, and violently opposing the authorities”. The charges are punishable with the death penalty.