EU envoy allowed to complete stay in Sudan
August 25, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — Sudan will allow a European Union envoy it ordered out of the country to remain until his tenure expires next month, following an EU apology, a presidential adviser said on Saturday.
President Omar al-Bashir will allow Degerfelt to stay after an apology from the EU, said Mahjoub Fadul, Bashir’s adviser for media affairs.
“The president of the republic accepted the apology and agreed that the head of the EC delegation in Khartoum can stay until the end of his tenure, which expires in three weeks,” Fadul said.
He declined to explain what activities the diplomats were involved in.
Foreign ministry spokesman Ali al-Sadig said the diplomats had sent letters to the heads of Sudan’s security and intelligence services about the detention of a prominent opposition politician.
He identified the politician as Mahmoud Hassanein from the Democratic Unionist Party.
Hassanein and 25 other people, including Mubarak al-Fadil, head of the opposition Umma Party for Reform and Renewal, are being detained in connection with an alleged plot to overthrow the government.
Sima Samar, the U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in Sudan, said this month she was concerned about the arrests of opposition politicians and urged more transparency from the government.
The London-based rights group, Amnesty International, has also criticized the conditions of detention of some of the detainees.
Sudan has a history of difficult relations with Western diplomats whom it sometimes accuses of meddling with the country’s internal affairs. Last year, it expelled Jan Pronk, the head of the U.N. mission in Sudan.
Sudan has been widely criticized for its counter-insurgency campaign in the western Darfur region.
(Reuters)