UN rights experts condemn hanging of 9 Darfuris

April 17, 2009 (GENEVA) – Five UN human rights experts condemned the execution of nine Sudanese contesting the validity of confessions obtained under torture and retracted before the judges.

On April 13, Sudanese authorities hanged nine men from the Fur group convicted of beheading a prominent journalist since three years ago.

The convicted told their families before being executed they were innocent and never killed the journalist, one of the relatives of the convicted people told Sudan Tribune. They said they should be considered as martyrs for the cause of Darfur and asked their families to not weep for them.

“It is with great regret and dismay that we have learned about the execution of the defendants who were found guilty of having committed the murder of newspaper editor Mohamed Taha Mohamed Ahmed,” said Ms. Manuela Carmena Castrillo, the Chair of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.

The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, mandated by the UN Human Rights Council to investigate allegations of arbitrary detention around the globe, issued a legal opinion in November 2008 in which it raised serious questions about the fairness of the trial.

They were held in detention for four months without contact with the outside world and bore visible signs of torture when they appeared in court.

“No judicial system, and in particular, the judicial system of a country that ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights on 18 March 1986, can consider as valid a confession obtained under torture and revoked before a court, and a sentence based on such confession,” the Working Group stated in its opinion.

Several member of the Human Rights Council had appealed to the Sudanese Government to stay the execution until all fair trial related concerns were dispelled in their entirety, or the men were given a new trial or released.

“We cannot sit in judgement about whether the defendants were guilty of the gruesome murder of Mr. Mohamed Ahmed. However, in cases involving capital punishment the slightest doubt cast on whether due process has been followed makes an execution inadmissible. This follows from the irreversibility of the death penalty,” Philip Alston, the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, added.

The hanging angered Darfuri who demonstrated in Khartoum to protest the hanging of the nine men. On Tuesday some 5000 demonstrators burned shops and cars in south Khartoum. They also chanted slogans supporting the Sudan Liberation Movement, a rebel group led by the exiled Abdel Wahid Al-Nur.

Further, a Fur tribal leader called in a statement released from Darfur to investigate the execution of the nine Fur saying it came in line with the crimes committed by the government in the region since 2003.

(ST)