Sudan frees human rights activist Mudawi

January 25, 2011 (NAIROBI) – The head of Sudan Social Development Organization (SUDO), Mudawi Ibrahim Adam, has been released from prison in Khartoum after serving a little over one month of his one-year sentence on charges of embezzlement, his organization said on Tuesday.

Mudawi was released from Al-Geraif Prison in Khartoum on the morning of January 25 after receiving a piece of paper telling him that the court which sentenced him on 22 December to one year in prison and a fine 3000 Sudanese pounds (1250 US dollars) had upheld his conviction but decided he had spent enough time and should be released immediately.

The genesis of Mudawi’s case dates back to 2006 when the Humanitarian Aid Commission (HAC), the Sudanese government’s official regulator of NGOs activities, charged him with mismanaging SUDO finances.

Subsequently, HAC appointed an auditor who scrutinized SUDO accounts and was unable to find evidence of financial mismanagement. After a series of hearings on the case, the Khartoum Criminal Court acquitted Mudawi of the charges on March 15, 2010.

HAC appealed against the court’s ruling and Mudawi was informed that the judges would be reviewing his case on December 22, 2010.

This time, however, the same judges who dismissed the original charges found Mudawi guilty and sentenced him to prison despite the fact that no further evidence was tendered to the court, according to SUDO.

In a statement dubbed “Murky Justice” seen by Sudan Tribune on Tuesday, Mudawi’s organization SUDO ridiculed the fact that the court upheld his conviction “in his absence and the absence of his lawyers.”

SUDO welcomed the release and claimed that the charges are part of “a long saga” of the targeting of the organization and its head by Sudan’s National Intelligence and Security Service.

“It has been an experience to see how justice in Sudan is being practiced and implemented and which rule of law does exist for the normal fellow Sudanese. Am out of prison more dedicated and determined to defend human rights and justice,” Mudawi was quoted as saying by SUDO’s statement following his release.

SUDO was among a group of local and international NGOs expelled and suspended immediately after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for president Al-Bashir in March 2009 against the background of the atrocities committed in Sudan’s western region of Darfur.

Mudawi, who is the laureate of the 2005’s Human Rights First award and Front Line award, had three spells in detention between 2003 and 2005 in relation to his human rights work.

In a call for urgent action following Mudawi’s sentence, the global human rights watchdog Amnesty International said Mudawi was “a prisoner of conscience, held solely in relation to his human rights work.”

Last year, Sudan detained 13 activists and journalists belonging to its restive western region of Darfur as well as human rights activist Abdul Bast Mirghani for lobbying to stage protests against the flogging of women. While Mirghani was released on December 20, 2010, Darfur activists remain in custody.

On December 17, the UN independent human rights envoy to Sudan, Mohammed Chande Othman, urged the government to either release Darfur activists or bring them to trial.

On 14 January 2011, the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders published an open letter to Sudan minister of justice condemning the continued detention of at least 40 human rights activist in Sudan and calling on the minister to order their release immediately.

(ST)