UAE extradites Sudan dissident despite rights group pleas
KHARTOUM, Nov 23 (AFP) — The United Arab Emirates extradited a dissident Sudanese army officer to Khartoum despite appeals from human rights watchdogs that his life might be in danger, a lawyer said.
Security personnel smuggled Brigadier Abdel Aziz Khalid out of a back entrance to the airport, avoiding journalists and a crowd of several hundred supporters who had turned out to welcome him, former attorney general Omar Abdel Atti said.
The Khartoum authorities insist that despite his involuntary return to his homeland to answer five-year-old charges of sabotage, Khalid will be freed under a general amnesty for political opponents issued in 2000.
“Khalid will be freed tonight or tomorrow, according to the justice minister,” Ali Mohamed Osman Yassin, Abdel Atti said.
“He was taken to the security offices only to complete some procedures and will be released in fulfilment of the declared presidential general pardon.”
But human rights watchdogs have expressed concern for Khalid’s welfare and had appealed to the UAE authorities not to honour the extradition request.
“We believe that the Sudanese governments extradition request is a politically motivated attempt to deny Abdel Aziz Khalid of his rights to freedom of expression, association and movement,” Human Rights Watch said in a November 9 letter.
“Abdel Aziz Khalid is a respected Sudanese opposition figure who was travelling to the United Arab Emirates on September 23, 2004 to give lectures and hold meetings when he was arrested on a Sudanese government extradition request.
“Human Rights Watch fears that if Abdel Aziz Khalid is forcibly returned to Sudan, his personal safety and well-being will be jeopardized, and he will be at risk of torture and other ill-treatment.”
The New-York based watchdog noted that the Eritrea-based armed opposition group which Khalid had commanded — the Sudanese Alliance Forces — was “now inactive” and “in negotiations with the government” along with the southern rebels of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army with which it had been allied.
The National Democratic Alliance to which they belonged put out a statement condemning the extradition “under the guard of officers of the security services of the terrorist and totalitarian regime” and calling for Khalid’s immediate release.
His detention “proves that the regime has not shifted from its policy of arrest, torture and persecution of campaigners for freedom, democracy and peace,” said the statement received by AFP in Cairo.