Sudan’s security elements coerce youth to make false confession over terrorist activities

March 11, 2020 (KHARTOUM) – The Sudanese Communist Party (SCP) said that an unidentified security force had detained young people in a suspected security facility and coerced them into making a false confession implicating them in terrorist activities.

“A group of young men were held in detention by plainclothes security agents who interrogated them in a suspected security headquarters, where they were tortured psychologically and pressured to confess having received money from the Communist Party and forced them to pose for pictures with weapons and explosives,” said the SCP Central Committee on Wednesday.

The SCP Central Committee pointed out that this incident shows that the same policies of the ousted regime were pursued under the transitional government.

The purpose of the false confessions of the young men, according to the leftist party, was to criminalize political forces and to accuse them of participation in sabotage and terrorist activities.

The SCP the age of the detained youth is between 16 and 18 years.

They have been released on bail after the legal support provided by a pro-democracy group of lawyers who took part in the press conference.

However, only one of them has accepted to speak to the media on Wednesday.

The need to re-educate the security forces and to change its methods have been recently raised by the General Attorney when the security forces used tear gas and batons to disperse a peaceful demonstration in Khartoum last February.

Also, the Sudanese authorities reformed the notorious National Security and Intelligence Services (NISS) and changed its name to General Intelligence Service (GIS), after dissolving the Operation Corps.

However, the arrest of the youth indicates that security apparatus continues to arrest and interrogate civilians while the Constitutional Document provides that the exclusive GIS’s mandate should be limited to intelligence collection and analysis.

(ST)