Darfur peacekeepers say unaware their plane was used to transport political detainee
May 19, 2011 (KHARTOUM) – The hybrid peacekeeping mission in Darfur (UNAMID) said it was not aware that Sudanese authorities used one of its planes to transfer a political detainee from the opposition Popular Congress Party (PCP).
The party reported the case to UNAMID’s chief, Ibrahim Gambari, and threatened to report the matter to the UN chief, Ban Ki-Moon, if no explanation is provided.
According to the PCP’s human rights secretary, Hassan Abdellah Al-Hussain, UNAMID informed his party that investigations into the case concluded that the mission’s personnel who transferred the detainee were not aware of his identity.
Al-Hussain, who was speaking in a press conference held in the Sudanese capital Khartoum on Monday’s afternoon, said that UNAMID claimed that the authorities told it that the transferee was a local official.
Last April the opposition party said UNAMID had participated in transporting several political prisoners from remote areas in Darfur to state security offices in big towns.
Since the dissidence of 1999 among the Sudanese Islamists, security services used to arrest regularly the leader of the party Hassan Al-Turabi, leading members and supporters.
Al-Hussian criticized the continued detention of PCP members by security authorities, and warned against any attempt to create flimsy excuses to re-arrest party members.
The PCP official further slammed the ministry of justice for ignoring the party’s demands for the release of its detainees.
The PCP leader Hassan Al-Turabi was released from jail in May this year after three months of detention without charges.
The veteran government opponent, who has been arrested several times since he broke ranks with the ruling National Congress Party, said after his release that he had not been interrogated and no one told him why he was arrested.
It is widely believed that Al-Turabi was arrested against the background of his warnings that the government could face a popular uprising modeled on those currently seen in some Arab countries if it continued to resist demands for reforms.
(ST)