Khartoum court acquits Darfuri students

The criminal court of Wassat in Khartoum has found five Darfuri students who were arrested by Sudan’s National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS) in June, “not guilty due to lack of evidence”. Speaking to Radio Dabanga on Monday, lawyers of the Darfur Bar Association said that while they were detained, the students were “subjected to physical torture with electrical sticks, batons and blindfolded together. They suffered racist abuses and their human dignity was humiliated”. According to the Bar Association, the complainant, Moataz Abdullah Abdul Gadir “is a member of the security apparatus, and the charges were abusive”. The lawyers’ statement stressed that “Darfuri students are frequently targets of unfair arbitrary prosecutions, detention for long periods without holding the abuser accountable”. The barristers stressed that “the dismissal of a lot of students from Darfur is deepening their sense of unequal citizenship and racial discrimination, which have become a threat to cohesion and national unity. The students who were released are Ahmed Abdulrahman Al Tahe of Sudan University College of Music and Drama (level five); Mohamed Abdullah Al Abdulkarim of Sudan University College of Music (level four), Ibrahim Adam Haj of Al Neelain University School of Law (level two), Muawiya Adam Musa Ateem of Omdurman Islamic University, Faculty of Economics, (level three), and Ibrahim Musa Hassan of Omdurman Islamic University’s College of Medicine. File photo Related: ‘Five Darfuri students to face military court’: report (21 July 2013)