Sudan arrests and tortures in crackdown-opposition
KHARTOUM, Sept 12 (Reuters) – Sudanese authorities have tortured and arrested members of an Islamist opposition party during a crackdown to find rebels from its western Darfur region, a senior party official said on Sunday.
The interior ministry of Sudan’s Khartoum-based government said it had no information about arrests or torture.
But officials from Islamist Hassan al-Turabi’s Popular Congress (PC) party said that at least two party members have been beaten and tortured by government authorities and on Saturday said one was tortured to death in detention.
“One man, his family is very afraid to say his name, they beat him and tortured him, but he is released now,” Turabi’s secretary Awad Babiker told Reuters on Sunday. “Another one is in intensive care at a security hospital. They beat him unconsciousness.”
On Saturday Babiker said Shamseddin Idriss died of brain damage inflicted while he was in detention.
Khartoum said on Saturday it had found an arms cache belonging to the PC party in a dawn raid on Friday. Party officials deny any link to the weapons. The interior ministry says security has been increased as a result.
“They are looking for members of the rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM),” a second PC official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
“They are torturing these people to extract confessions out of them. (They are) electrifying and beating them.”
JEM is one of two African tribal rebel groups, which took up arms in remote Darfur last year, accusing the government of supporting Arab militias, known as Janjaweed, to loot and burn African villages. Khartoum denies any link to the Janjaweed and says they are outlaws.
CAR SALESMEN, SHOPKEEPERS ARRESTED
PC members said the government is targeting party members, people of Darfur’s ethnically African tribes, or those who even look like they could be from one of those tribes.
“Now they are arresting all the secretaries of the party. Yesterday they arrested Turabi’s deputy Abdallah Hassan Ahmed, and released him today,” Babiker said.
Police have set up checkpoints and searched cars across Khartoum since the government said it unveiled the attempt.
“They are arresting used car salesmen, shopkeepers, searching everywhere,” the unnamed official said.
Turabi was arrested in March and accused of inciting tribal tensions. His party has also been accused of supporting rebellion in Darfur.
The United States has branded violence in Darfur a genocide and accused the marauding Janjaweed of pursuing a scorched earth policy against black African villagers in the remote western region of Darfur.
The United Nations has estimated that some 1.2 million people have fled their homes and up to 50,000 people have died from direct violence, starvation or illness in what it describes as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
Rebels began an uprising in Darfur in February 2003 after years of skirmishes between mainly African farmers and Arab nomads over land and water. The government stands accused of turning to the Janjaweed militias to help suppress the rebels.
Analysts say the government is creating bad feeling as it negotiates in the Egyptian capital Cairo with exiled opposition parties to return to Sudan, while cracking down on the most active opposition party in Khartoum.