Day: January 4, 2023

The remaining 95 West Darfur detainees, among them 15 minors, held in Port Sudan Prison resumed their hunger strike. Lawyer Nafeesa Hajar called on the international community to intervene instead of “ignoring the issue of the West Darfur detainees”.

Hajar, a member of the West and North Darfur Detainees Defence Team, accused the authorities of violating the law in a press conference at the Teiba Press hall in Khartoum on Monday.

She said that the director of Port Sudan Prison in end December prevented her and other members of the defence team from meeting the detainees “under the pretext of the prison regulations”.

This behaviour “violates laws, criminal procedures, the constitution, and binding international treaties,” she stated.

“The detainees have been held without charges by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and tried by the Governor of West Darfur, which confirms that the judiciary has abandoned its responsibilities,” the lawyer said, “This means a major setback in the cause for human rights.”

She called on the International Red Cross and UNICEF to stop ignoring the West Darfuri detainees, and intervene.

Defence team lawyer Rehab Mubarak commented at the press conference that “all prisons in Sudan have turned into detention centres”. By detaining people, the authorities pressure their relatives to stop their activism, she claimed, and referred to a number of other violations of laws and treaties, including detaining minors in public prisons.

Mubarak confirmed reports that about 50 West Darfuri prisoners were hidden from a UN mission visiting Port Sudan Prison in December. They were threatened with ill-treatment in the event they would continue their hunger strike.

‘Compound injustice’

In November, the Darfur Bar Association (DBA) announced that 350 West and North Darfuris were subjected to human rights violations as they were being held without legal justification in the Ardamata Prison in the West Darfur capital of El Geneina, the infamous Shala Prison in El Fasher, capital of North Darfur, the El Huda Prison in Omdurman, and the Port Sudan Prison in Red Sea state. Most of them were detained by paramilitaries of the RSF.

In August, the DBA and partners reported a mass detention campaign targeting tribal leaders and other activists, teachers, students, and farmers who refused to partake in RSF-led reconciliation efforts . Several people disappeared.

“All prisons in Sudan have turned into detention centres” – defence lawyer Rehab Mubarak

On December 11, the detainees in the various prisons embarked on a hunger strike. 57 detainees, among them minors, were released five days later.

Hajar told Radio Dabanga last week that the Port Sudan Prison administration promised to release the other West Darfuri detainees as well, whereupon they stopped their hunger strike.

When they were returned to their prison cells later that day, they understood that the administration had only ‘hidden’ them, because a delegation of human rights organisations was to visit the prison to inspect the conditions of the convicts.

Lawyers of the defence team who arrived at the Port Sudan Prison on December 29, were not allowed to see their clients. The prison director notified them that even their families are not permitted to visit them except with a letter from the authorities that detained them, which are the governor of West Darfur and the RSF Command.

“What is happening can be considered compound injustice,” Hajar said, referring to the combination of denial of a fair trial, preventing their families and lawyers from visiting them, and not allowing them to see doctors.

In a press statement on December 28, the defence team said that in addition to 95 people being held in Port Sudan Prison, 68 are still detained in Ardamata Prison in El Geneina, bringing the total number of West Darfuri illegal detainees in the country to 163. At least 17 people who were released from El Huda and Port Sudan prisons returned to El Geneina by land. Five others would follow, while those suffering from (chronic) diseases would remain in Khartoum for medical examinations.

22 months in prison

Former detainee Musab Ibrahim (16) from El Geneina, capital of West Darfur, told the press during the conference of the Darfur Detainees Defence Team in Khartoum on Monday that he was held in April 2021 by a force of the RSF while he was on his way to the market.

“They covered my face and beat me in the vehicle that took me to the El Geneina Police Station.” Ibrahim stayed in the police station for 20 days without investigation before he was transferred to the Ardamata Prison in the city, where he was notified that the governor sentenced him in absentia to one-year prison.

After nine months in Ardamata, he was transferred to El Huda Prison, where he was put in a cell with inmates sentenced to death, beaten, verbally abused, not allowed to see a doctor.

Ibrahim said that of the detained minors was mentally ill, while another was vomiting blood. “We then went on a hunger strike, which caused complications for eight of us, before I was released after spending 22 months in prison.”

Source: Radio Dabanga