Stay of execution for seven Darfur rebels

Leaders of JEM-Sudan, a breakaway faction of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) convinced the Sudanese government to suspend the execution of seven condemned rebel commanders on Monday.

The management of the federal Kober Prison in Khartoum North had already transferred the convicts, who were detained during the JEM attack on Omdurman in May 2008, to the execution chambers.

JEM-Sudan’s Political Secretary Nahar Osman Nahar told Sudan Tribune on Monday that the intensive contacts they made with the Sudanese Presidency and the government’s Darfur Peace follow-up Office “were crowned with the halt of the execution of the seven commanders”.

The breakaway faction signed the Doha Document for Peace in Darfur with the Sudanese government in April 2003. The mainstream JEM still fiercely opposes the Khartoum regime.

In a statement earlier on Monday, both JEM movements strongly condemned “the government’s immoral behaviour that violates international laws”.

They warned the “leaders of the National Congress Party” for the consequences if the death sentences are carried out.

They also appealed to human rights organisations to accelerate their intervention and prevent the execution of the sentences of Abakar Yahya Eisa Sadig, Abulgasim Abdallah Abubakar Goni, Hamad Adam Hasaballah Adam, Adam El Tom Adam Teya, Abdelrazeg Daoud Abdallah, Ibrahim Sharif Yousef Abdelkhaleg, and Hassan Abdallah Mohamedein Ishag.

Relatives of the prisoners said that their brethren were moved from Shala prison in El Fasher, capital of North Darfur, to Khartoum on Sunday.

They demanded the government to stop the execution, which they described as “unfair and incompatible with the essence and values ​​of justice and human rights”, and to prosecute the janjaweed militias instead.