Sudan: Extrajudicial Killing and Incommunicado detention A Report covering the events of December 13, 2018 to April 11, 2019 Monitoring and promoting respect for Human Rights and Legal Reforms inside Sudan. www.acjps.org Executive Summary: The methodology of preparing the report excluded registering breaches against members of the regular forces because they were not included in the Center‟s mandate in addition to a death incident relating to the explosion of a device in Al Fath suburb in Khartoum State killing eight children. This occurred on December 23, 2018. Although it falls within the time frame of the report, there is nothing to link it to the protests. Within the mandate of the report, it has been observed that 65 civilians were killed during the period from December 14, 2018 to April 11, 2019. These victims passed away of different cause; but these causes derive primarily from ill-treatment and excessive use of force on the part of the Sudanese authorities. The report bears witness to and chronicles the widest detention campaign since 1989 including arrests of children, individuals of political affiliations and systemic detentions of university students especially those whose ethnic origins link them to Darfur region in western Sudan. Detention also included the leaders of political opposition from the Umma National Party, the Sudanese Communist Party, the two wings of the Ba‟ath Socialist Party, the Sudanese Conference Party, the Nasserite Unionist Party and some members of the Popular Congress Party, the People‟s Liberation Movement- North Sector (Aqar Leadrship) and civil society and social media activists. Detention also systematically extended to trade union leaders like doctors, teachers and agriculturalists. Since the leadership of protests was linked to the Sudanese Professionals Union, a large-scale detention campaign was launched against teachers, veterinarians, doctors and engineers in various sectors including specialists in communications, lawyers, pharmacists, journalists, human rights activists and others. The number of detainees who appeared before criminal courts or those who were accused of charges that were not proven before court was estimated at 2500 persons during the period covered by the report. During this period detainees suffered from torture and ill-treatment in incommunicado detention for long periods before allowing their relatives to see them on short visits under close vigilance by the agents of the security service. The government continued launching campaigns whose goal was to discredit detainees and portray them as saboteurs committing crimes relating to the destruction of pubic properties. In pursuit of this, the government transmitted deficient and misleading official information to some quarters concerned with the situation of human rights in the country. An instance of this is the public 1 | P a g e announcement made by the former Minister of Information, Ahmed Bilal Osman, on February 17, 2019 in which he said, “The number of detainees seized up to today is 816 protesters” adding that most of them were released. This contradicted facts as most detainees were released after April 11, 2019 in simultaneity with the downfall of the National Congress regime under the leadership of the former President Omar al-Bashir. More than 46 detainees were transported from the regions to be detained in Khartoum. Four (4) student residential units, in which university students ethnically descending from Darfur region resided, were targeted. These units were in each of Kosti, Sennar State, Ad-Durushab neighborhood in Khartoum North, Jabal Awliya in Khartoum and Al-„Abassiyya in Omdurman. The number of students arrested at these units was (54) university students. The detainees were subjected to physical and psychological torture comprising beating with water hoses, wooden sticks and batons during the process of arresting, transporting and interrogating them. They were forced to stand up for long hours, deprived of sleep and medication, exposed to excessive cold, electrified and raped. The psychological torture of detainees typically involved threat with rape, harassment by Police and Security officers, verbal and racial abuse through death and rape threats, ill-treatment comprising forcing women to clean cells and wash dishes at Omdurman Prison, transporting detainees with their hands cuffed and preventing them from using toilets. This involved prisoners transported from the rural areas to Khartoum like transporting detainees from Port Sudan on the Red Sea, Kasala, El-Gedaref and Nyala to Khartoum and the detainees at El-Obeid in Northern Kordofan to Port Sudan on the Red Sea. These abuses involved violation of privacy, harassment, men inspecting and frisking women, confiscating mobile telephones, touching sensitive female body parts during inspection, forcing detainees to change clothes in front of Security Service men, as well confiscating valuables like mobile telephones in return for release. The public sphere was terrorized by acts such as heavy firing of live ammunition in the neighborhoods of Buri in Khartoum, Al- „Abassiyya in Omdurman and Al Haj Yusif in Khartoum North. This act of terrorizing the public involved deploying tanks in the streets of Al-Fashir city in Northern Darfur State, cracking down on hospitals and firing live ammunition and tear gas on hospitals as evidenced by the cases of Omdurman Hospital and Royal Care in Khartoum. It also involved raiding houses, breaking into bedrooms, violating privacy while uttering horrifying screams accompanied with death threats, recapturing the wounded from homes and health centers, taking back the wounded to detention centers and denying them staying at medical centers to receive treatment as well as forbidding them to be admitted at hospitals as inpatients. 2 | P a g e Censorship on the press involved confiscating newspapers after printing, imposing revision of newspapers by the Security Service prior to printing and monitoring printing houses by the Security Service after printing newspapers. Scores of printed copies of newspapers were confiscated during the period covered by the report without giving reasons for this or material compensation for the damages incurred by newspapers owners. Journalists were arbitrarily detained in crackdowns on newspapers‟ head offices, or during participation in protests. They were prevented from covering protests, subjected to prolonged periods of detention and physical and psychological torture, made objects of criminal Police reports, forbidden from writing and monitored in a way to bar writing opinion pieces. In this varied process of repression, the authorities engaged in cracking down on the head offices of newspapers, violating privacy and frisking persons in search of mobile telephones. Reporters affiliated to foreign TV Channels and news agencies were arrested, made objects of malicious criminal reports, subjected to censorship in the process of approving commentators by the National Intelligence and Security Service. This process of frustrating and constraining the freedom of the press also included refusal to renew the licenses of correspondents as the licenses of some foreign TV Channels were either not renewed or withdrawn or cancelled altogether. The security authorities also resorted to leveling the charges of treachery and acting against the interests of the state against correspondents in an attempt to smear their reputation. Bloggers and social media activists had their webpages and personal accounts hacked and were coerced into unveiling passwords during investigation and interrogation in addition to inspecting their mobile telephones and violating their privacy. This period had also witnessed constraining the freedom of the press and media as embodied in pre and post printing censorship, banning coverage of events, withdrawing the licenses of journalists and media channels and blocking social media websites. On December 26, 2018 Facebook and Twitter were blocked and this continued until February 26, 2019 when the ban on websites was lifted albeit no quarter in the state declared its responsibility for blocking the website or gave a reason for this. 3 | P a g e Table of Contents Executive Summary: .................................................................................................................................................................................. 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 7 Methodology: ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 9 The Legal Framework: ............................................................................................................................................................................... 9 Record of Violations during the Period Covered by the Report 1. Extrajudicial Killing ............................................................................................................................................................................... 11 2. Killing Inside Detention Centers First case ................................................................................................................................................................................................. 12 Second case……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………....13