Sudan to quiz Egyptian ambassador on fate of detained miners

August 19, 2015 (KHARTOUM) – The Sudanese government said on Wednesday it is confident that miners who are still held by Cairo despite being pardoned by Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi will be released.

This week, Sudan’s ambassador in Cairo Abdel-Mahmoud Abdel-Halim expressed his disappointment over the situation and recalled that Khartoum swiftly released 101 Egyptian fishermen who were detained since last April and released following an amnesty issued by Sudanese President Omer Hassan al-Bashir earlier this month.

The Sudanese foreign minister Ibrahim Ghandour asked his aides to query the Egyptian envoy in Khartoum on the status of the miners’ release. He stressed that the Sudanese embassy in Cairo is closely monitoring the case.

Ghandour disclosed that his Egyptian counterpart Samih Shoukri told him that they are in the process of collecting the miners from the various jails they are imprisoned in.

The Sudanese government spokesperson Ahmed Bilal Osman said they expect them to be freed “at any moment”.

“We are confident about the arrival of Sudanese miners [home] at any moment and we have no doubt about this because we trust the Egyptian authorities and their cooperation with us on this matter after President Bashir issued a decree for the release of the Egyptians jailed in the city of Port Sudan,” he was quoted as saying.

It is noteworthy that the Egyptian media reported on Tuesday that Sudan arrested 10 Egyptian fishermen on charges of breaching its territorial waters in the Red Sea.

(ST)