Amnesty: Sudan releases jailed human rights lawyer

July 29, 2013 (KHARTOUM) – A Sudanese lawyer and human rights activist who has been held since her arrest on 4 May 2013, was released from detention without charge on 11 June, according to Amnesty International.

Asma Ahmed was detained without charge for over a month. During her incarceration she was held in solitary confinement for long periods and interrogated repeatedly, the human rights group said in statement.

Before her arrest Ahmed had defended numerous political prisoners and prisoners of conscience.

Ahmed is a member of the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement – North (SPLM-N), which was banned by the Government of Sudan in September 2011, after its armed wing began fighting the army in Blue Nile. Fighting in South Kordofan had already erupted in June that year head of South Sudan’s independence.

The South was allowed to secede as part of a 2005 peace that had special provisions for the SPLM-N’s hinterlands in South Kordofan and Blue Nile where many people fought with the SPLM in the South during over two decades of conflict.

However, many of the provisions for the two areas had not been completed before South Sudan’s independence so the SPLM-N refused to move South of the border, disarm or be integrated in the Sudanese army as stipulated in the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement.

Since the conflict erupted over 100,000 people have been forced to flee into South Sudan and Ethiopia. The SPLM-N has been lobbying the international community to pressure Khartoum into allowing humanitarian access to areas controlled by its forces.

It is estimated that 230,000 civilians have been displaced within Blue Nile and 450,000 displaced within South Kordofan.

Amnesty International said that Ahmed’s detention appears to be part of a pattern of detention of SPLM-N activists, intellectuals, and religious leaders.

(ST)