Sudanese security arrests female member of the SCoP
August 12, 2015 (KHARTOUM) – The opposition Sudanese Congress Party (SCoP) said the National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS) has detained on Wednesday a female member of the party and continues to summon three other leading figures on a daily basis.
SCoP secretary general Abdel-Qayoum Awad al-Sid told Sudan Tribune that NISS summons Widad Darwish, Khalid Omer Youssef, and Magdi Okasha from morning till midnight every day.
Last Friday, SCoP said that NISS detained its youth secretary, Magdi Okasha, from his home in Kafuri suburb in Khartoum North.
Two days earlier NISS raided the home of the foreign affairs assistant of the SCoP president Khalid Omar Yusuf in al-Gireif suburb of Khartoum and detained him without charges. They were both released later.
SCoP official pointed that Darwish refused to report to the NISS office on Tuesday, saying that a NISS force came to her home in al-Thawra neighborhood in Khartoum’s twin city of Omdurman on Wednesday and took her to an unknown destination.
He said that Darwish just returned from a long trip to Cairo where she sought medical treatment, saying NISS officers interrogated her about her stay in Egypt.
Awad al-Sid added that daily summoning of Youssef and Okasha is considered full detention, saying that both party members have suffered from NISS’s seizure of their cars.
He demanded the immediate release of the detainees or putting them to trial, asking NISS to stop harassing SCoP cadres.
NISS enjoys wide-ranging powers of arrest, detention, search and seizure under the country’s 2010 National Security Act.
COMPLAINT TO THE POLITICAL PARTIES AFFAIRS COUNCIL
Meanwhile, the SCoP official said they filed a complaint with the Political Parties Affairs Council (PPAC) urging them to interfere to preserve rights of the party members.
He said the legal department at the PPAC told them that they would consider the complaint and respond to it in September.
Awad al-Sid criticized the way the PPAC dealt with the complaint which contained serious violations committed by the NISS against their members on a daily basis, describing the dragging procedures as “intentional injustice”.
The SCoP complaint which was extended to Sudan Tribune on Wednesday said that constitutional and legal rights of its members and leadership have been violated; pointing the party is registered according to the PPAC regulations.
The complaint pointed that the NISS detentions and summoning against the SCoP members was mainly due to public speeches delivered by them, saying those speeches are part of the peaceful expression of the SCoP political vision.
It is worth noting that SCoP continued to hold speeches in public areas such as the markets and gathering places to urge the citizens to resist the government policies.
The complaint said that being a member of the SCoP doesn’t constitute a crime but rather an open option for the Sudanese people according to the bill of rights which allows freedom of choice and organization according to the political parties’ law.
It further demanded the PPAC to carry out its duties and ensure respect of all organs to the law as well as preventing the NISS from violating the SCoP right of holding peaceful political actions.
(ST)