Sudan’s NCP calls for probe into flight of 9 medical students to ISIS-controlled areas
March 22, 2015 (KHARTOUM) – The Sudanese government accused internal and external actors and international intelligence agencies of being the driving force behind extremism in Arab and African societies through funding it with weapons and communications.
The students who hold British citizenship belong to upper middle-class families residing in the UK who sent their children to study medicine at a private college in Khartoum belonging to a state minister.
Their families are believed to be in Turkey seeking to get them back, the Observer newspaper reported.
The students went to the region “to help, not to fight”, Turkish politician Mehmet Ali Ediboglu told the newspaper. “So this case is a little bit different.”
Ediboglu told the paper he thought the students had been “cheated, brainwashed”.
One of the youngest, Lena Maumoon Abdulqadir, 19, informed her family of the trip via the messenger WhatsApp, according to The Observer.
She reportedly told her relatives: “Don’t worry about us, we’ve reached Turkey and are on our way to volunteer helping wounded Syrian people”.
Her father told a Turkish newspaper he had informed both British and Turkish police of the situation.
The circumstances behind how this group were collectively convinced to undertake this endeavour.
The ruling National Congress Party (NCP) Mustafa Osman Ismail called on government agencies to study reasons behind this migration by these students.
“The state apparatus must be attentive and proactive, and if there are any signs of recruitment it should be aborted,” Ismail said on Sunday.
Ismail pointed out that those students grew up in an environment that embraces extremism and that most of them are from Europe.
He said that Sudan has a school for treatment of extremism.
“We have the conviction and the experiences that extremism cannot be addressed through violence and even extremists in Sudan were treated through dialogue and ideas after which they rejoined the society” the NCP official said.
Meanwhile, the Sudanese 2nd Vice President Mohammed Abdulrahman Hassabo accused foreign circles of fuelling extremism and providing material support.
In remarks before Arab-African Youth Summit to combat extremism which started in Khartoum on Sunday, Hassabo said that extremism is one of the security challenges facing Arab and African communities and stressed the need to explore root causes of extremism and find out the optimal way to deal with it.
He denied that Sudan is experiencing a wave of extremism or terrorism saying that few cases which emerged were dealt with early on through direct dialogue with these groups.
The Sudanese president Omer Hassan al-Bashir on the other hand called for immunization of young people from extremist ideas to confront ISIS.
Bashir sharply criticized in an interview with Egypt’s al-Hayat TV America’s presence in the coalition against ISIS because it angers Muslim youth who consider the US as an enemy of Islam.
He said the solution lies in the cooperation between Arab countries to face ISIS and called for reconciliation among Sunni, Shiite and Kurds sects in Iraq.
(ST)