Sudan peace may not end emergency law detentions

By Opheera McDoom

KHARTOUM, Jan 7 (Reuters) – An agreement to end more than two decades of civil war in southern Sudan should lead to the release of hundreds of political detainees and other prisoners.

Sudanese army soldiers escorting another truck full of prisoners, through the streets of central Khartoum in Sudan, Sep. 30, 2004 (AP).

But analysts say an emergency law that allows the Sudanese government to detain people without charge could remain in force in some areas and undermine a key aspect of the agreement.

“It could be possible they are going to say that because of how things are in Darfur the state of emergency will remain in Darfur,” said Faysal el-Bagir, head of the Khartoum human rights centre.

“This needs pressure from the international community.”

The peace deal, to be signed in Kenya on Sunday between government officials and the southern rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), declares both sides should release all prisoners of war within 30 days of signing.

Sudanese officials said on Thursday the SPLM would free all 750 of its prisoners of war within one week from Sunday.

Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail said he was not sure how many prisoners of war Sudan had detained over the past almost 22 years of civil war, but insisted they would all be released within the time frame specified by the agreement.

But the southern peace deal does not cover a separate conflict in Darfur, where a rebellion has raged for almost two years, killing tens of thousands of people and forcing almost 2 million from their homes.

Analysts fear this conflict could be used as an excuse to keep Sudan’s state of emergency, in place since 1999, which government officials have previously promised to lift after the final southern deal.

The southern agreement, known as the Naivasha protocols, says the state of emergency will be lifted “except in areas where conditions do not permit” — a provision which may contradict the government’s earlier pledge to repeal the law.

The state of emergency allows the authorities to detain people incommunicado and without charge for long periods, to ban meetings and break up peaceful demonstrations.

El-Bagir said there were hundreds of political prisoners in Sudan, but it was not known exactly how many. He said his organisation knew of at least 200 people detained under the state of emergency law, but there were also many more they did not know about.

Khartoum was reluctant, he said, to release its most famous detainee under the state of emergency, opposition Islamist leader Hassan al-Turabi, who is blamed for instigating tribal tensions and whose party the government says is heavily involved in the Darfur rebellion.

But prominent lawyer Ghazi Suleiman, head of the Sudanese Organisation for Human Rights, said Turabi was being held in a Khartoum prison and would have to be released after the signing of the southern peace agreement.

“I think in Khartoum there is no conflict and I am expecting the release after Jan. 12 of Turabi and all the political prisoners should be released according to the Naivasha protocols,” he told Reuters.

However, he said, an important exception would be those detainees from Darfur.

“If I was the (Sudanese) security director I would not release them because they might abscond and might go to Darfur,” he said. He said the protocols legally allowed for that as the Darfur rebellion was a threat to national security.

Rights group Amnesty International expressed concern over the case of 27 men recently arrested in Marla village in South Darfur state, known to have been a rebel stronghold and bombed by government planes in the past few weeks.

“They are now facing charges which carry the death penalty, and are to be tried by a Specialised Criminal Court, whose procedures are grossly unfair,” the group said. These courts were set up in Darfur under the state of emergency.

“A state of emergency which violates basic freedoms should not be allowed to remain,” said Kolawole Olaniyan, director of the group’s Africa programme. “Legislation must be brought into conformity with international human rights law,” Amnesty said.