Sudanese opposition politicians to start hunger strike in jail

November 4, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — Two high-profile detained Sudanese opposition politicians said on Sunday they would begin a hunger strike until they are either released or charged with a crime.

Mubarak al-Fadil, head of the opposition Umma Party for Reform and Renewal, and the Deputy Secretary-General of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), Ali Mahmoud Hassanein, are among 25 opposition figures who were arrested and accused of a coup attempt but have not been charged almost four months later.

“We have decided to enter into a hunger strike beginning on Wednesday November 7 and continuing until our constitutional rights and freedoms are returned to us or we are charged in front of a fair court of law,” a joint statement from both men said.

Sudanese law says detainees cannot be held longer than two weeks after which they must be charged or released. An appeal was rejected in Sudan’s Court of Appeal stating that charges had been brought against the detainees but none have been announced either to the accused, their lawyers or in public.

Sudan’s Justice Minister Mohamed Ali al-Mardi had banned the media from reporting on the incident, an order largely ignored as journalists said it had no legal basis.

The U.N. rapporteur for human rights in Sudan, Sima Samar, expressed concern at the arrests ahead of the country’s first democratic elections in more than two decades due by 2009.

The violations … and … the lack of prompt access to legal counsel, will undermine the defendants’ right to a fair trial,” she said in a report last month.

“The Special Rapporteur has received allegations that some of the detainees were tortured or ill-treated by National Security officers to force them to admit involvement in the alleged coup,” her report added.

She urged the government to work with more transparency in the matter.

Fadil’s cousin, Sadig al-Mahdi, won the last democratic elections in 1986 and was prime minister until the current government took power in a bloodless coup three years later.

(Reuters)