Sudanese security releases religious preacher and ISIS supporter

June 26, 2015 (KHARTOUM) – Sudan’s National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS) released Thursday the general coordinator of the far-right One Nation Movement group and the openly supporter of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Mohamed Ali al-Gizouli.

In a statement issued following his release, he said that his “ideas and stances didn’t change”, stressing he has not been interrogated by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), as it had been rumoured.

“I’m not afraid of them [CIA], I’m a martyr awaiting execution, God willing,” he said.

The self-proclaimed Jihadist told Sudan Tribune that he was engaged in a series of discussions with religious scholars inside the prison, stressing his commitment to the international Jihadist thought.

“I hit a dead end in my discussion with those scholars. Of course, a scholar who respects his knowledge wouldn’t debate a captive,” he added.

Al-Gizouli disclosed that he was released at the initiative of the head of the Islamic Fiqh Academy, Isam Ahmed al-Bashir, saying they agreed that discussions would continue later with a group of scholars.

It should be recalled that NISS organizes discussion rounds with the extremists inside their detention centers in order to review their thought.

“Allah [God] has honoured me with 240 days in detention due to my call for resisting the US intervention in our Islamic world and to support the Jihadists in Iraq and Levant in order to confront the Arab-Crusader alliance,” the Jihadist preacher said.

He added that 240 days in detention don’t equal one hour of the humming of the aircrafts of Arab-Crusader over the heads of the Jihadists.

“The global Jihad movement is the legal and objective alternative for the killing of our peaceful spring [revolutions] and running over it by the deep state. Those who killed the aspirations of the [Islamic] nation must be prepared to meet the other options of the nation,” he added in his statement.

Al-Gizouli said the One Nation Movement believes that the education (an approach adopted by the Muslim Brotherhood) and the Jihadist approaches are complementary not contradictory, stressing both approaches contribute to achieve renaissance of the Islamic nation.

Al-Gizouli further pointed out that Islamic preachers and scholars need to engage in a deep dialogue on the nation’s major issues without throwing accusations of treason on each other.

ISIS presence in Sudan has made the headlines last March after British media outlets confirmed reports that nine medical students from Sudanese origins entered Syria via Turkey to work in hospitals under the control of ISIS.

A religious group affiliated with the One Nation Movement was thought to have recruited them at the University of Medical Sciences and Technology.

Last month, Sudan’s minister of Higher Education Sumaya Abu-Kushawa accused unnamed circles of actively recruiting students to join ISIS.

Also, earlier this month sources told Sudan Tribune that an ISIS cell comprised of three Middle Eastern men and an Eritrean were arrested by the Sudanese authorities in the coastal city of Port Sudan on 10 June.

(ST)