BEHIND THE RED LINE
Political Repression in Sudan

Human Rights Watch/Africa
Human Rights Watch

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Copyright © May 1996 by Human Rights Watch.
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 96-75962
ISBN 1-56432-164-9

This report was researched and written by Human Rights Watch Counsel Jemera Rone. Human Rights Watch Leonard H. Sandler Fellow Brian Owsley also conducted research with Ms. Rone during a mission to Khartoum, Sudan, from May 1-June 13, 1995, at the invitation of the Sudanese government. Interviews in Khartoum with nongovernment people and agencies were conducted in private, as agreed with the government before the mission began. Private individuals and groups requested anonymity because of fear of government reprisals. Interviews in Juba, the largest town in the south, were not private and were controlled by Sudan Security, which terminated the visit prematurely. Other interviews were conducted in the United States, Cairo, London and elsewhere after the end of the mission. Ms. Rone conducted further research in Kenya and southern Sudan from March 5-20, 1995. The report was edited by Deputy Program Director Michael McClintock and Human Rights Watch/Africa Executive Director Peter Takirambudde. Acting Counsel Dinah PoKempner reviewed sections of the manuscript and Associate Kerry McArthur provided production assistance.

This report could not have been written without the assistance of many Sudanese whose names cannot be disclosed.

GLOSSARY xi

1 SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS 1

2 ARBITRARY ARREST AND ADMINISTRATIVE OR PREVENTIVE DETENTION 28

THE APPLICABLE LAW 28

THE NATIONAL SECURITY ACT OF 1995 33

THE REALITY 38

THE ROLE OF THE SUPREME COURT 38

TREND TOWARD RESTRICTION OF RIGHTS 41

PROLONGED ARBITRARY DETENTION 43

ARRESTS OF SADIQ AL MAHDI

AND UMMA PARTY MEMBERS 45

MASS RELEASES OF MAY 1995 AND AUGUST 1995 47

OTHER ARRESTS: 1995 AND 1996 49

NO ICRC ACCESS TO PERSONS DETAINED IN

CONNECTION WITH THE CONFLICT

(PRISONERS OF WAR) 51

DAILY REPORTING AS A FORM OF HARASSMENT 53

3 TORTURE AND DEATH IN DETENTION 55

THE APPLICABLE LAW 55

SECURITY DETENTION FACILITIES AND

CONDITIONS OF DETENTION 61

Ghost Houses 61

CITIBANK GHOST HOUSE BEFORE MARCH 1995 62

"CLOSING" OF CITIBANK GHOST HOUSE IN MARCH 1995 67

Kober Prison Security Facilities 67

Other Places Of Detention 70

DEATHS IN DETENTION 71

TORTURE AND CRUEL, INHUMAN

OR DEGRADING TREATMENT 74

4 IMPUNITY 79

CASES OF IMPUNITY 80

Torture of Brig. (Ret.) Mohamed Ahmed

al Rayah al Faki 80

Abd al Hafiz Ahmed al Bashir 83

Abdul Wahab al Beshir 85

Faisal Hassan Omar 87

Relief Agency Employees and Others: Juba, 1992 88

CASES IN WHICH CONVICTIONS HAVE BEEN

UPHELD OR ARE BEING REVIEWED 90

Yousif Ali Yousif 90

Al Juzuuli Idris Abdulmajid 91

5 FUNDAMENTAL FAIRNESS IN THE JUDICIAL SYSTEM AND THE NORTH-SOUTH DIVIDE 93

THE APPLICABLE LAW 94

FAIR TRIAL 96

Military Tribunals 96

Summary Execution of Twenty-Eight Officers

Tried by Military Tribunal in 1990 96

Other Military Tribunal Cases 98

Civilian Court: The Explosives Case 100

DEATH PENALTY 103

Death Sentences in Civilian Courts 103

Death Sentences in Military Tribunals 106

Conditions of Executions 107

PRISON CONDITIONS 108

The Kober Prison Population 108

Political Prisoners 110

Transfers of Political Prisoners 111

Omdurman Prison for Women 112

Conditions Deteriorate at Omdurman Prison;

Prisoner Releases 114

CONFISCATION WITHOUT DUE PROCESS

IN SECURITY CASES 115

THE LAW AND THE NORTH-SOUTH DIVIDE 117

6 POLICING SOCIETY 127

PUBLIC ORDER AND BEHAVIOR POLICE

AND THE LAWS THEY ENFORCE 129

Abuses by Public Order and Behavior Police 132

Public Order Courts 133

CREATION AND POWERS OF THE PEOPLE'S

POLICE FORCE 135

People's Police Force Compared to the Regular Police 137

DEPLOYMENT OF COMPREHENSIVE SECURITY POLICE 137

Abuses by Deployment of Comprehensive

Security Police 138

ABUSES BY NIF MASS ORGANIZATIONS AND

NEIGHBORHOOD GROUPS 139

ABUSES BY THE CENTRAL RESERVE FORCE

AND OTHER UNITS OF THE REGULAR POLICE 140

7 POLITICAL AND CIVIL RIGHTS 142

FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND THE PRESS 142

The Applicable Law 142

Controls Before the 1993 Press Law 145

The 1993 Press and Printed Materials Law 146

Suspension and Closure of Newspapers and Detention

of Their Owners and Journalists 151

Restrictions on Journalists and Writers 157

The Arrest of Sadiq al Mahdi and

Free Speech in Mosques 158

Attacks on Clandestine Presses, Universities

and Other Unauthorized Fora 159

Access to Foreign News and Fax Machines 161

Lack of Remedy for Unauthorized Confiscation

of Printed Materials 162

FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION 163

The Applicable Law 163

The Government's Derogation from the Right to

Freedom of Association 166

Political Parties 168

Trade Unions and Professional Associations 172

Government Trade Union Legislation 175

Other Nongovernmental Associations 178

Violations of Freedom of Association 179

RIGHT OF PEACEFUL ASSEMBLY AND THE CONDUCT

OF LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS IN

CONTROLLING DEMONSTRATIONS 181

The Applicable Law 182

Relatives of Twenty-Eight Officers Demonstrate 184

Police Violence During Evictions and

Demolitions of Squatter Settlements 188

Student Demonstrations and Police Conduct 192

FREEDOM OF RELIGION 193

The Applicable Law 202

Christians 204

Arrest of Church Leaders 205

The Attempt to Register Churches

as "Voluntary Societies" 209

Church Construction and Demolition 211

Church Schools and Teaching of

Religion in Government Schools 213

Religion in Prisons 216

Muslims 216

RIGHT TO MOVEMENT 220

The Applicable Law 221

Travel Bans on ex-Security Detainees 223

The Travel Ban Imposed on Human Rights

Activist Dr. Ushari Mahmud 223

Internal Movement 225

Human Rights Watch's and Other

Foreigners' Experience in Juba

and Other Garrison Towns 227

Restrictions on Travel Abroad 229

Attendance at Conferences Abroad 231

Women 232

STUDENTS' FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION AND

EXPRESSION RIGHTS AND POLICE CONDUCT 232

Student Demonstrations in September 1995 232

Detentions Following Demonstrations, and Due Process 239

Further Targeting of Ahliya University 242

Background: The University of Khartoum 246

SQUATTERS AND INTERNALLY DISPLACED

PERSONS IN KHARTOUM 252

Due Process Rights for Squatters and Displaced 254

Lack of Due Process in Relocation from Khoder,

October 1994, and Other Sites 258

Popular Committees and Freedom of

Association: Angola 265

NATIONAL SERVICE AND POPULAR DEFENSE FORCES 268

National Service 269

The Popular Defense Forces Militia 273

Tribal PDFs 274

Controlling Minority Populations 280

PDF Training 281

Students in the PDF 284

Civil Servants, Doctors, Women

and Tribal Leaders 287

Prisoners 290

Mass Mobilizations 291

8 ABUSES BY ALL PARTIES IN THE WAR 293

THE APPLICABLE LAW 298

VIOLATIONS BY GOVERNMENT ARMY AND MILITIA 306

Bombing 306

Taking Children and Women Slaves as War Booty 307

The Government's Garrison Towns 315

Government Militia 318

VIOLATIONS BY THE REBEL FORCES 323

Nuer/SSIA Attack Akot in October 1994, Killing 106 323

SPLA-aligned Raiders Attack Ganyliel in

July 1995, Killing 210 325

The Forcible Disappearance of Dr. Karlo Madut 327

Looting and Taking Hostages by All

Parties to the Conflict 330

Looting of Relief Barge and Holding Crew and

Relief Personnel Hostage in May 1995 331

Doctors Captured in Upper Nile by Government

and Released in Exchange for

SPLA Hostages, May-June 1995 334

Combatants Captured by the SPLA and SSIA 338

Lafon Declaration Purportedly Grants Amnesty to

Both Sides in Faction Fighting 340

SSIM/A Court Martials Struck down by Convention 340

SPLA and Looting in Labone: the Duty to Investigate 342

Ansar Sudanese Muslim religious sect headed by Sadiq al Mahdi; base of the banned Umma Party

Ansar al Sunna a traditional Islamic sect calling for the revival of the traditions of the prophet Mohamed

Anya-Nya the southern Sudanese rebel army of the first civil war, 1955-72

Anya-Nya II rebel south Sudanese forces who, together with former members of the Sudanese army, formed the SPLA in 1983; also, some of those forces that defected from the SPLA later in 1983 and became a militia force of Nuer in Upper Nile province supported by the Sudanese government; several Anya-Nya II groups over the years were wooed back to the SPLA

Baggara Arabized tribes of western Sudan; their name means cattle herders

Citibank Ghost House a secret detention facility run by Sudan Security, called "Citibank" because it was in a house behind the high-rise office building where Citibank used to have its Khartoum office

DUP Democratic Unionist Party, junior partner in several 1986-89 coalition governments, associated with the Khatmiyya traditional Islamic sect and its spiritual leaders, the Mirghani family

Dawa Islamiyya large Islamic nongovernmental organization that engages in relief work in over fifteen African countries

Dinka a southern Nilotic people originating in Bahr El Ghazal and Upper Nile

E.U. European Union

"ghost house" secret place of detention

hudud - offenses of six major offenses in Islamic law with penalties prescribed in fixed terms in the Qur'an or the Sunna (traditions of the prophet Mohamed)

Hunger Triangle a name adopted by relief organizations in 1993 for the area defined by Kongor, Ayod, and Waat, in Upper Nile province, where hunger was especially acute

ICRC International Committee of the Red Cross

ILO International Labor Organization

jihad holy war

Khatmiyya Sudanese Muslim religious sect headed by Mohamed Osman al Mirghani; base of the banned Democratic Unionist Party

mujahedeen holy warriors or participants in jihad

murahiliin Arab tribal militias

NGO Nongovernmental organization

NIF National Islamic Front, the militant Islamist political party which came to power in 1989 after a military coup overthrew the elected government

National Assembly legislative body as of March 1996

National Service agency within the ministry of defense responsible for conscripting men who under law are obliged to serve one or two years in the armed forces

Nuba the African people living in south Kordofan's Nuba Mountains; some are Muslims, some Christians, and some practice traditional African religions

OFDA Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, within the U.S. Agency for International Development

OLS Operation Lifeline Sudan, a joint United Nations/NGO relief operation for internally displaced and famine and war victims in Sudan which began operations in 1989. It serves territory controlled by the government and by the SPLA. Much of its work in southern Sudan is through cross-border operations conducted by OLS' Southern sector based in Nairobi.

PDF Popular Defense Forces, a government-sponsored militia

RASS Relief Association of Southern Sudan, the relief wing of Southern Sudan Independence Movement

SPLA-United the name that SPLA dissidents adopted after they united on March 27, 1993, until their organization was renamed in October 1994 as Southern Sudan Independence Movement/Army

SPLA-United rebel movement formd by Dr. Lam Akol after his (Western Upper Nile) February 1994 expulsion from SPLA-United, based in Tonga, Upper Nile

SPLM/A Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army, the political organization and army of the Sudanese rebels formed in 1983, of which John Garang is chairman

SRRA Sudan Relief and Rehabilitation Association, relief wing of the SPLM/A

SSIM/A Southern Sudan Independence Movement/Army; this is the faction of the SPLA, led by Cmdr. Riek Machar Terry Dhurgon, that broke away from the SPLM/A and Dr. John Garang's leadership in August 1991. It was based in Nasir, Upper Nile, and for a time was referredto as "SPLA-Nasir;" on March 27, 1993, others joined it and it was renamed "SPLA-United." In November 1994, it was renamed Southern Sudan Independence Movement/Army

Three Towns Khartoum, Omdurman and Khartoum North; their combined population is estimated at four million

Toposa southern Equatorian people originating in the Kapoeta area of eastern Equatoria

Transitional National legislative body until March 1996

Assembly

Triple A camps displaced persons camps in Ame, Aswa and Atepi created in 1992 in Eastern Equatoria and evacuated in 1994 due to government military advances

UNDP United Nations Development Program

UNHCR United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

UNICEF United Nations Children's Fund

Umma Party a banned political party which was the senior mainstream political party in the coalition governments between 1987-89, associated with the traditional Islamic sect of the Ansar and its spiritual leaders, the Mahdi family

WFP World Food Program

Violation of political and civil rights in Sudan remains the norm almost seven years after the elected government was toppled by a military coup backed by the National Islamic Front (NIF) party. A state of emergency was imposed on the date of the coup, June 30, 1989, which has never been lifted. The transitional constitution of 1985 was abolished and although elections for president and some members of the assembly were held in 1996, these elections were held without political parties, which remained banned since the 1989 coup, and in a climate of denial of basic freedoms of speech, assembly, and association, with the threat of arbitrary arrest by an ever-present security apparatus and detention with possible torture or ill-treatment. The limits to political participation were bluntly described by President (Lt. Gen.) Omar Hassan al Bashir in a January 1996 speech, where he said, "When we talk of handing power to the people, we mean the people will be within certain limits but no one will cross the red lines which are aimed at the interest of the nation."1 This anomalous situation provides no effective protection for human rights.

When President al Bashir warned that "no one will cross the red lines," he was commenting on a lecture that Abel Alier, a prominent southern politician and former vice-president of Sudan, gave to a university audience on the sensitive issue of self-determination for southern Sudan, the non-Muslim and non-Arab third of the national territory where oil resources lie. Self-determination is off-limits for discussion even though the country has been involved in a civil war for much of the period since independence in 1956 (with the exception of eleven years from 1972-83 when the south had autonomy). The rebels, mostly southerners and including Christians and practitioners of traditional African religions, and Muslims from the Nuba Mountains in central Sudan, belong in large part to the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) led by Cmdr.-in-Chief John Garang. The rebel SPLM/A controls substantial territory in the south, which is about three times the size of neighboring Uganda. Sudan is the largest country - 2.5 million square kilometers - in Africa. Although the SPLM has demanded a "united, secular Sudan" since 1983, that goal has been eroded within the south in favor of demands of independence.

Long-standing complaints of southerners about discrimination against them in the north and under northern rule in the garrison towns of the south - onthe grounds of religion, ethnic origin, language, and race - have not been heeded nor seemingly understood by the northern political class, traditionally composed

of those riverain Sudanese who define themselves as Arab. Sudan, with a 1992 population estimated at 26.7 million, is one of the most diverse countries in the world. According to the 1956 census (the only one which included ethnic origin), there were nineteen major ethnic groups and 597 subgroups in Sudan. In 1956 those who identified themselves as Arabs formed the largest ethnic group, at 40 percent of the population, followed by Dinka (12 percent), Beja (7 percent), and West Africans (6 percent). Islam is the state religion but only about 60 percent of the population are Muslims. Christians account for 4 percent of the national total (15 percent of the southern population), and traditional religions the rest.2 The official language, Arabic, is spoken by about 60 percent of the population. There are over 115 tribal languages, of which over twenty-six are spoken by more than 100,000 people.3

Since 1989, when the present government took power through a military coup, the diversity of Sudan's peoples has not been respected or encouraged, although prior governments did not have a good track record on respect for diversity either. Unlike previous governments, however, the NIF's stated aspiration is to create an Islamic state with one language, Arabic, and one religion, Islam - although it hedges on the rights of religious minorities. For instance, Minister of Education Kabashour Kuku announced in 1995 that the government would introduce changes in the school curriculum aimed at bringing up children according to the tenets of Islam and requiring Arabic as the language of instruction in all parts of Sudan, including the south where the majority of the population is non-Muslim and where the medium of instruction has been the vernacular or English.4 International human rights norms which require protection and respect for religious, racial, ethnic, linguistic and other minorities, and forbid discrimination on such grounds, are routinely violated in the course of government efforts to impose conformity on the population.

Arbitrary arrests

The National Security Act of 1995 provides for prolonged arbitrary detention in "security" cases of up to six months without judicial review, with

detainees in the custody of Sudan Security, in violation of international standards prohibiting arbitrary arrest and detention. The government has also misrepresented the status of this law to the U.N. It said in its November 1995 response to the U.N. human rights report that the 1992 National Security Act was in effect, and failed to disclose that it was replaced by a more restrictive act signed into law in May 1995.

The new 1995 law was quickly applied that month to detain arbitrarily the former prime minister and leader of the banned Umma Party and the Ansar sect on which it is based, Sadiq al Mahdi, on account of a speech he gave during the religious holiday Al Eid in which he criticized the NIF and the government. The violation of Sadiq al Mahdi's right to free expression was followed a week later by mass detentions of other Umma Party leaders. These detainees were released, never having been charged, in August; the time the prisoners spent in incommunicado detention appeared designed to remind the party, its leader, and Sudanese civil society that there was a certain "red line" beyond which criticism would not be tolerated.

Many other mass and individual arrests followed in the same fashion, of students during the September 1995 demonstrations and of suspected political opponents and those believed to be in league with the northern armed rebel movement based in Eritrea in late 1995 and early 1996.

Torture and death in detention

Detention conditions, especially for Sudan Security detainees, violate international law and standards requiring safeguards against torture, "disappearance," and unlawful detention. Detainees are regularly held for interrogation and prolonged detention incommunicado, often in unacknowledged detention places known as "ghost houses." These places of detention are administered by Sudan Security, which also is responsible for the interrogation of the detainees, with no supervision by the courts or other independent authorities with power to order a release of the detainees, in violation of international standards.

Mohamed al Fatih Abdel Moneim Taifor died in suspicious circumstances in July 1995 while in the custody of Sudan Security in Khartoum: fellow detainees reported hearing his cries as he was beaten the night he died.

These "ghost house" torture centers became so notorious that in March 1995 the government greatly remodeled the notorious "Citibank" ghost house,located near the former Citibank branch office in Khartoum, transferring the sixty detainees held there to a specially-renovated section of Kober Prison in Khartoum North. The special section at Kober was under the jurisdiction of Sudan Security. Despite the notoriety of the "ghost houses," political detainees continued to be taken back and forth from Kober, and some were subjected to torture and other ill-treatment during interrogation in these ghost houses.

Although it appears that torture is not used as routinely as it was in the early years of this government, it has not been abandoned. The worst reports of torture and ill-treatment continue to come from the war zones and border areas. A former rebel boy soldier who wanted to leave Khartoum and return to southern Sudan in 1995 was stopped at Kosti, the northern Nile river terminal for the trip south, when he tried to board a barge. Military intelligence agents arrested him because he did not have a travel permit. After interrogation they handed him over to Sudan Security in Kosti, where he was subjected to further questioning and severe torture. Sudan Security agents burned his naked back and body, among other things.

Impunity

The lack of prosecution of Sudan Security agents and army personnel for torture and murder continues to be the norm, with some few exceptions. As of June 1995, the conviction of only one army soldier - not an officer and not a Sudan Security member - was upheld by the Supreme Court during the year for unlawfully killing a civilian at a checkpoint. Other similar convictions were still pending Supreme Court review. An announced pardon of thirty-seven military personnel on August 31, 1995, may, however, have resulted in the release of the Sudan Security and army personnel in jail for abuses against civilians in June 1995.

Torture has been tolerated by the courts in a virtual guarantee of impunity. Testimony and medical examinations established at trial that the defendants in a high-profile 1994 case (known as the "Explosives Case") had been tortured, but the court violated international standards when it admitted the confessions in evidence and used them to convict the defendants. Moreover, it took no steps to initiate criminal prosecutions of the torturers. This case was doubly offensive since one of the torturers identified in court - Abd al Hafiz Ahmed al Bashir - had been accused of an arbitrary checkpoint killing a year earlier; had he been suspended from his job then, he would not have been able to engage in torture in 1993.

Nor has the government lived up to its obligations under international law to undertake a prompt and impartial investigation of serious torture allegations in the case of Brig. (Ret.) Mohamed Ahmed al Rayah al Faki. Brig. al Rayah was detained in 1991 and with several others convicted of a coup attempt. He filed acomplaint of torture while he was still in jail, and as a result was not released in the release of political prisoners in August 1995. The government, through various agents, tried to persuade him to withdraw his complaint several times, but he refused. He was finally released in February 1996, having been punished by spending six months in jail beyond the time his peers, who did not file any torture complaints, served. His complaint remains uninvestigated.

The future impunity of Sudan Security agents has been further reinforced. The National Security Act as now amended bars all civil and criminal actions against Sudan Security members for anything they did during their employment, unless the agency's director gives prior approval in cases where the conduct was not related to employment. Under this law, torture conducted in the course of employment is not actionable.

Fundamental fairness in the judicial system

The Sudanese judicial system, which in the past has capably defended fundamental rights using Sudanese law, has been weakened by the perennial inability of the body politic to agree upon a constitution, three military coups that suspended basic rights and ruled by decree, and the difficulty of transition, starting in 1983, of the legal system from one based on the British system to one based on Islamic law, shari'a.

Immediately after the June 1989 military coup, the de facto government dismissed some fifty-seven judges. Others in the judiciary were winnowed out after that. New judges purportedly sympathetic or loyal to the NIF were recruited. When the number of states was increased to twenty-six, more new judges were appointed to fill the increased need in the states.

In September 1995, the government announced that it was creating a committee to review the cases of all those who were "sent into retirement for the public interest" after the 1989 coup. Whether any dismissed judges will be reinstated bears watching.

The death penalty is still in use, and executions continue. It is difficult to know what the rate is since military tribunals, which appear to use the death penalty much more frequently than the civilian courts, do not make their proceedings public. It appears that justice is much more summary and rendered with considerably fewer procedural safeguards in military tribunals than in civilian courts, often with no advocate or counsel permitted, and no effective appeal from a death sentence. This summary "justice" violates due process and excludes the additional safeguards required by international standards in death penalty cases, which standards are designed to minimize the possibility of error. Human Rights Watch opposes executions under law whenever and wherever carried out,irrespective of the crime and the legal process leading to the imposition of the death penalty, because of its inherent cruelty.

Even though some military tribunal sentences have been softened by executive action, substituting life sentences for the death penalty, and ultimately in some cases by pardons, the summary military trial and execution of twenty-eight army officers and others in 1990 (for an attempted coup) still stands out as an abuse without remedy. The government has never released any information about the trials, nor has it even disclosed the burial place of those officers.

Military tribunals also were responsible for the summary executions of many persons, civilian and military, in Juba in 1992 after the SPLA military incursion into that southern city. There has never been an accounting of any of these trials nor a disclosure of where the bodies are buried. It appears that in many cases there were no trials at all before executions. Several hundred persons remain unaccounted for, and the investigation frequently promised by the government has never materialized. These reported unacknowledged detentions should be considered disappearances.

The right to due process and privacy has been arbitrarily denied by Sudan Security when it confiscates homes and other property belonging to political detainees, in some cases without any written order; in other cases it has not returned the property, even after acquittal. Some property is reportedly kept and used by Sudan Security.

Freedom of expression and the press

The government of Sudan told the United Nations in November 1995 that freedom of expression has been guaranteed by the Press and Printed Materials Law and there are many daily newspapers where opinions different from those of the Government are freely expressed. Although under the 1993 press law a few more independent newspapers have been allowed to open, several of those have since been closed, their presses confiscated, and their owners and journalists arrested. In many other cases, following hard on the publication of critical articles the government disliked, publications have been closed for periods of time. The government has enforced stringent financial and ownership requirements under the press law to close newspapers that criticize the government. Some newspapers published before June 1989 have not been permitted to reopen since they were banned.

In June 1995, the independent Akhir Khabar (Latest News) published an editorial highly critical of the 1993 Press and Printed Materials Law which the publisher said threatened small independent papers like his with extinction. This editorial followed the publication, in May 1995, of an interview with newspaperowner Mahjoub Erwa about his 1994 arrest and the government confiscation of his newspaper, Al Soudani al Doulia. The Press and Publications Council established under the press law ordered Akhir Khabar off the streets for two weeks in July 1995 and on January 18, 1996, the council ordered Akhir Khabar's permanent closure, accusing it of publishing articles it said "incited animosity, social disintegration and a spirit of intolerance." Its publisher said the real reason the paper was closed was because it had announced that it intended to publish a serialized interview with former elected Prime Minister Sadiq al Mahdi. The council also decided to bar the same publisher's forthcoming Sabah Al Kheir (Good Morning) newspaper. The publisher accused the government of banning these newspapers to keep them out of the debate preceding the March 1996 elections. These permanent closures are restrictions on the press that go far beyond what is permissible under the free expression guarantees in international human rights law.

Several newspapers published during the 1986-89 period of multiparty government have never been permitted to reopen after they were banned in 1989 at the time of the coup. Journalists believed to be associated with the Umma Party's underground Sawt El Umma (Voice of the Nation) newspaper were detained and grilled about the paper in November 1994. A man suspected of coordinating Al Maidan, the underground journal of the banned Sudan Communist Party (SCP), was detained in April 1995 and held in a "ghost house" then in the Sudan Security section of Kober Prison for a total of four months of warrantless incommunicado detention. Following the large street demonstrations in September 1995, at least thirteen journalists were arrested on suspicion of publishing Al Shabiba, the underground journal of the Sudan Youth Union, affiliated with the SCP.

There are limits, vaguely admitted by the government, on what the press can publish in Sudan. These limits shift. Notwithstanding the press closures described above, during the March 1996 elections these limits appeared to be slightly relaxed, and the Sudanese press - with the exception of those newspapers already suspended or permanently closed - jumped into the electoral fray with articles harshly criticizing the ruling party. This freedom is not considered a right, however, and it remains to be seen if the banned newspapers will be reopened and if this latitude continues after the elections.

Freedom of association

Immediately after the June 1989 coup, the junta banned free association. Constitutional Decree No. 2 stated that "all political parties and groups are to be disbanded, and it is illegal for them to be established or to remain active." The decree also banned all trade unions and federations and confiscated their funds andproperties, and canceled all licenses issued to non-religious institutions and societies.

In 1996 the ban on political parties remains intact, although seven years have passed and the elimination of political parties appears intended to be a permanent political arrangement, not a temporary measure. The NIF justifies this by what it describes as a need to do away with sectarian political parties; in past multiparty elections, the largest vote-getters were parties based on Sufi Muslim religious sects whose followers voted for their religious leaders - usually men who inherited their positions. These parties were the Umma (Ansar sect) and the Democratic Unionist Party (Khatmiyya sect). The ban on political parties, however, extends also to nonsectarian political parties, such as the Sudan Communist Party and the Republican Brothers.

All parties are banned, with the de facto exception of the NIF. It is an open secret that the government has been run from behind the scenes by this technically "banned" political party. Elections for president and some legislative seats were held in March 1996 but no political parties were allowed to participate, and many NIF leaders were elected. NIF leader Dr. Hassan al Turabi became speaker of the National Assembly.

Other associations, such as professional groups, have been permitted to reconstitute themselves under post-1989 laws, but their independence is severely limited and their freedom restricted by the "red line." The government maintains that they are subject to their own administrative regulations but subjects professional associations and trade unions to close control: it was precisely these organizations that played a leading role in the peaceful overthrow of two Sudanese dictatorships in 1964 and 1985. Other civic associations, such as trade unions and student unions, have been taken over by NIF supporters through tactics including the detentions of rival leaders, dirty tricks and violence.

A neighborhood network of popular committees, created by the current government, provides a means to control residential areas where demonstrations also played a political role in toppling past governments. These committees, too, cannot go beyond the "red line" to defend the interests of residents against the government - such as opposing government demolitions of its members' homes.

Freedom of assembly

The government of Sudan has stated that freedom of assembly is fully guaranteed by law. In fact, the law is administered to permit only government-sponsored or pro-government assemblies and demonstrations. Anti-government assemblies, both indoors and outdoors, remain illegal because the government will not grant permits to its opponents and violently represses their demonstrations, soopponents rarely seek such permits. Their assemblies, or indoor meetings, take place clandestinely, if they are held at all, to prevent Sudan Security from observing and arresting the participants. This repression of the right of peaceable assembly has been going on for almost seven years; citizens know where the "red line" is, and continue to cross it at their peril.

The outer limits of the right of assembly have been explored by the relatives of twenty-eight army officers who were summarily executed for an alleged coup attempt in 1990. They demonstrate publicly once a year on or near the anniversary of the executions. Sudan Security has used excessive force illegally to break up their demonstrations, which have been peaceful. In 1995 a demonstration in a Khartoum street quickly disbanded when Sudan Security arrived, but the authorities proceeded to beat and detain six women. In 1996 Sudan Security refrained from physically attacking the demonstrators. However, it continued its harassment and intimidation campaign to prevent the relatives from exercising their rights by approaching them before the day of the demonstration and asking them to sign statements agreeing not to demonstrate. The government still does not accept their right to peaceably demonstrate, and in 1996 only grudgingly tolerated their short annual demonstration.

In late 1994 police used lethal force to break up a demonstration of squatters protesting the bulldozing of their homes in Khoder, Omdurman. The police killed about eleven shanty town residents and injured many more; some protesters reportedly threw stones at the bulldozers, but all available evidence indicates that the use of firearms was a grossly disproportionate response. After a storm of international protests, the government managed to conduct the next large demolition of squatters' homes in Angola, Omdurman, in March 1995 without the use of lethal force.

Right to movement

The right to freedom of movement inside Sudan has been severely restricted, with the southern region placed off-limits to many, including southerners living in the north whose families are in the south. Restrictions are particularly hard on southerners who were politically active during the period of multiparty government. Those citizens and foreigners working in relief or development agencies, including the U.N., are subjected to very strict limitations on movement in Juba and other southern garrison towns, and thus on the work they can do there. Movement to the Nuba Mountains is tightly controlled on the limited occasions it is permitted, making relief or development programs there out of the question, except by agencies aligned with the government's Islamization program.

Even in Khartoum there are restrictions on movement for certain categories of people, although in the past year those restrictions seem to have eased. Former political detainees - never charged with or convicted of any crime - frequently must sign a written undertaking agreeing to limitations on their residence and not to travel abroad or sometimes, even outside a designated city, without prior approval.

Since an exit visa is required for citizens and residents leaving Sudan, departure is never problem free for certain categories of people. They include former political detainees and those who intend to attend conferences abroad. Even after the issuance of an exit visa, the authorities have stopped travelers from leaving with no reason given.

Women's rights of movement and travel outside the country are subjected to discrimination in that adult women, unlike adult men, must have the permission of a male family member or guardian to travel.

Freedom of religion

Being a Muslim does not guarantee freedom of religion in Sudan's Islamic state. The two large Muslim sects, the Ansar and the Khatmiyya, from which, in the past, the two largest political parties drew their members - the Umma Party and the Democratic Unionist Party, both banned since 1989 - have been subjected to government attempts at control and confiscation of their mosques. Some Muslim religious groups critical of the government and the National Islamic Front - as being insufficiently religious - have been subjected to harassment.

The government took a step forward in its relations with the churches when it repealed the Missionary Society Act of 1962 in late 1994, under which foreign missionaries were expelled from Sudan in 1964. Subsequently, however, the president issued a decree the churches feared would require each Christian congregation to register separately and secure approval from a government minister to continue worshiping, while imposing other controls on their daily affairs that threatened to violate the freedom of religion. When the churches rose in protest against the decree's unfairness, the decree was not enforced.

The government's move to grant more exit visas to Christian clergy is counter-balanced by heavy-handed government tactics to restrict the movement and freedom of expression of clergy. The arrest and televised release in January 1996 of a priest who the government said was involved in "sabotage" plans in Juba marked a recent heightening of tension between the government and the Christian community. The priest and a student detained about the same time - both members of a southern tribe, the Toposa - were reportedly tortured into making false confessions in court and before the video cameras of Sudan Security.

The most serious religious rights violations, however, occurred in conjunction with the government's efforts to proselytize in prisons, the armed forces, the civil service, the universities, and other sectors of society. The PDF is the principle vehicle for carrying out this agenda. Participation in forty-five days of its religious-military training program, intended to create holy warriors to fight in a holy war in the south, is mandatory for civil servants, university students, and others. The mandatory training, infused as it is with Islamic religious fervor, creates an atmosphere of coercion on all participants to convert to Islam in violation of freedom of religion, or if they are already Muslim, to join in the government's particular interpretation of Islam.

Students' free association and expression rights and police conduct

The largest anti-government demonstrations in the six years since the army and NIF seized power started on university campuses in September 1995. Up to thirty anti-government protesters were killed and at least seventeen wounded as the demonstrations spread to the center of Khartoum and other towns. Many hundreds were beaten and detained without charges.

Crowd control does not appear to have been conducted in compliance with United Nations guidelines on the use of force and firearms by law enforcement officers. Security forces used live ammunition and tear gas on the first and second days of the demonstration to disperse the demonstrators, some of whom reportedly smashed windows and caused other damage to property. The principle that the intentional lethal use of firearms be permitted only when strictly unavoidable in order to protect life does not seem to have been followed.

The government also used NIF security forces and NIF youth militias, neither of which are lawfully established and regulated public forces, alongside police and Sudan Security forces to control and attack the student demonstrators. Where those allowed to use firearms are not part of public law enforcement bodies, but are members of ruling party militias, supervision and control of their conduct and use of force is particularly difficult to regulate and accountability for official misconduct is sidestepped.

Human Rights Watch received reports that up to 2,000 students and others were detained incommunicado without any criminal charges brought against them. Some detainees reportedly were beaten and tortured; more than three had their arms deliberately broken, according to later evidence. After local and international protests, most detainees were released after a few days, but the government reiterated its determination to try several on unspecified charges. Several prominent advocates (lawyers) were arrested at the same time and released without explanation a few days later.

Ahliya University in Omdurman became the target of a security force raid on September 23, 1995, in which agents deliberately brutalized a student who was admitted to Omdurman Hospital the same day with several broken limbs. The agents destroyed college computers and ransacked offices. Ahliya University, a private university, had refused to enforce the policy of making Arabic the language of instruction (which the Ministry of Higher Education mandated throughout Sudan), employed lecturers purged from public universities, and had a liberal attitude toward women's dress. The greatest issue of contention between Ahliya University and the government's however, was reportedly the tolerance of a student movement that the authorities considered too rebellious. In late November 1995, armed members of NIF student and other militias attacked anti-government students at Ahliya; the Student Union Activity Center was burned down and many students were injured. The government refused to intervene to halt the assault.

Abuses by the government in the war

The government's approach to the war is divisive: its aim appears to be a military victory in which the dominant Islamic and Arabic culture is imposed on militarily defeated non-Islamic and non-Arabic speaking southern and other peoples. The south is to be "brought to the light" - an expression frequently used in conversation by government officials and NIF supporters - through conversion, assimilation and abandonment of southern cultures, languages and religions. The war against the south is characterized as a Holy War (jihad). At frequent government mass rallies the head of state and other government officials address the participants as Muslims and encourage them to continue with the Holy War against the south. On the fortieth anniversary of the independence of Sudan, for example, President Lt.-Gen. al Bashir

reaffirmed that Sudan was entering a renaissance, which is an embodiment of real independence, so that Sudan could perform its Arab, Islamic and international roles. . . . [He] referred to the spirit of jihad which has engulfed the entire people of Sudan. He said that sectors of the society were currently competing with each other in the fields of jihad in defense of the faith and the homeland.5

The government refers to Muslims who die in battle against the south as holy warriors (mujahedeen) and martyrs (shu'hada), celebrating their deaths by "weddings" as promised in the Qur'an.

The army provides Islamic religious training to national service conscripts and Popular Defense Forces (PDF) militia. There is little respect for the right to maintain one's own non-Muslim religion in this environment, and the pressure to conform by adapting to Muslim religious practices is great. Civil servants, aspiring university students and others are required to join these ostensibly voluntary PDF forces for forty-five days and receive military/religious training. All students, male and female, wishing to enter any university must first have completed PDF training, and have a certificate to prove it; this requirement is in addition to national service obligations imposed on male students.

The government has manipulated differences between different southern peoples and financed several ethnic breakaway rebel factions to serve as its proxies in attacks on the main rebel group, the SPLM/A. In March 1996, Cmdr. Riek Machar, leader of the mostly Nuer Southern Sudan Independence Movement/Army (SSIM/A) forces who lead a breakaway from the SPLM/A in 1991, signed a peace agreement with the government. Joining him was Cmdr. Kerubino Kuanyin Bol, formerly of SSIM/A, a Dinka from northern Bahr El Ghazal who has terrorized his region for more than a year, looting and killing Dinka civilians and sometimes members of the SPLA, with the support of the Khartoum government. From the beginning of the war in 1983, the government has always supported militias composed of southerners disaffected with the SPLA and its commander-in-chief, John Garang. The government is responsible for the atrocities committed by the militias working with it.

As the government army has - with one exception - denied taking any combatants prisoner during the thirteen years of civil war, it appears likely that summary executions are committed in the field. The army has indiscriminately bombed civilian areas in the south, including landing strips where displaced civilians gathered to receive relief food from U.N. and other agencies. Army and government militia have committed abuses of humanitarian law such as beating and torturing prisoners, and conducting scorched earth campaigns of indiscriminate firing at villages and civilians, looting, and kidnaping women and children for use as slave or forced domestic labor. Government forces occupy garrison towns in the south surrounded by a sea of rebels.

Slavery

Slavery is even more forbidden as a topic for discussion inside government-controlled Sudan than is self-determination for the south and religiousdiscrimination. Historically, southern peoples, including the Dinka, Nuer and Shilluk, were captured in slave raids by the Turko-Egyptian empire and by northern and western Sudanese, including by the nomadic Baggara tribes of Darfur.

Slavery experienced a resurgence when the Baggara were armed with automatic weapons by the central government to attack their Dinka civilian neighbors in the mid-1980s. The Dinka are the largest of the southern peoples, and the top leadership of the SPLM/A is Dinka. Following a common but illegal counterinsurgency theory of draining the "sea" or people so the "fish" or rebels cannot swim, the tribal militias were given a free hand to raid the Dinka, killing those who resisted, looting cattle, and violently capturing women and children - war booty - to be used as slaves in unpaid domestic labor, enforced by beatings. This practice continues today. Testimony from children who escaped from slavery, and the relatives who sought the freedom of captive family members held as house servants, was collected by Human Rights Watch during its 1995 visit to Sudan. See Children of Sudan: Slaves, Street Children and Child Soldiers (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1995).

The government has been under investigation by several U.N. bodies and mechanisms with regard to the allegation of condoning slavery and forced labor for several years, notably the International Labor Organization, the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child, the U.N. Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery, and other mechanisms of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights.

The government in response to a U.N. report has claimed that, with regard to slavery, "the element of intention is decisive." In the Sudan, it maintains, tribal fights normally result in captives and prisoners of war on both sides of the conflict, but there is no intention to take slaves. Testimonies of scores of escaped slaves taken over several years by different organizations and journalists rebut the premise that there is no intention to take slaves. Captured women and children are transported hundreds of kilometers from the victims' homes to the homes of the attackers, forced through physical punishment to work for no pay, and tracked down when they try to escape.

The government has taken the inexcusable attitude that slavery must be "proven" to it, instead of living up to its obligations under international human rights law to seriously investigate the grave and frequently well-documented reports on this practice, and protect its citizens from this abuse.

Abuses by the rebels in the civil war

The rebel forces also have a history of human rights and humanitarian law abuses including holding fellow rebels prisoner in prolonged arbitrary detention, confiscating food from civilians, looting, and summary executions. Indiscriminatefighting between and among rebel factions has led to numerous civilian casualties and enormous displacement of the population.

The highest number of civilian casualties caused by fighting between rebel factions in 1994 was an attack on Akot in the Lakes region of Bahr El Ghazal, in Dinka territory, in October 1994, where 106 bodies were counted, mostly civilians: forty-eight women and children and fifty-eight men (twenty of the dead were identified as SPLA soldiers). Thousands of cattle were stolen by the raiders. The attacks were by a Nuer militia believed to be backed by the government of Sudan, and the SSIM/A.

Despite the "permanent" cease-fire agreed in April 1995 between the SPLM/A and the SSIM/A, and probably in retaliation for the attack on Akot and to regain stolen cattle, forces believed to be under SPLA command from the Akot area raided Ganyliel in July 1995, killing 210 people, mostly civilians (thirty men, fifty-three women, and 127 children), and destroyed thirty-five villages. This was the highest number of civilian casualties from the fighting between rebel factions in 1995. Over 3,500 head of cattle were looted. Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS) (Southern Sector), the United Nations-coordinated disaster relief program, undertook an investigation and the SPLA promised to investigate and report on the incident. No SPLA report was ever produced but some of the stolen property was returned.

Looting of civilians and of U.N. and non-government (NGO) relief supplies by the parties has continued, often on a large scale. When the OLS evacuated relief staff from Nasir on February 10, 1996, their equipment and property were extensively looted, including boats and generators, almost certainly by SSIA forces. In 1995 almost forty relief personnel were taken hostage in three separate incidents, according to the OLS.

The SPLA admits it has taken government soldiers and officers and Popular Defense Forces militia members prisoner in combat. It permitted a visit from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to 229 such prisoners in January 1996, and 102 prisoners in April 1996; the SPLA acknowledged holding about 600 persons in detention. To date, however, it has not permitted the ICRC to visit rebels accused by the SPLA of "treason" or other crimes.

Equal treatment for the displaced and squatters

The rights of the poor to due process before their homes are demolished is nonexistent. Since 1990, access to the courts or to any tribunal to adjudicate property claims regarding land registered in the name of the state has been flatly denied by government decree. This gave the government a free hand to deal with the squatters and displaced persons who occupied state and unregistered land -since under the same decree, all unregistered land was to be considered to be registered or held in the name of the state. Hundreds of thousands of squatters and displaced persons have been denied due process as part of a systematic government campaign of "relocation" in high gear since 1992 in Khartoum. Their homes are bulldozed, and they are forcibly relocated to unprepared sites far from Khartoum and any employment possibilities. In 1994, eleven persons were shot dead when squatters and displaced persons resisted home destruction and forcible relocation in Omdurman.

The displaced or squatters who arrived in Khartoum after 1990, almost all southerners and Nubas, are denied all relocation and property rights when they are forcibly evicted and their homes in "unauthorized settlements" destroyed. They are forced to live in sites in which they have no right of tenure and no guarantee they will not be displaced again.

Recommendations to the government of Sudan:

The right to life and to physical integrity

* Institute a high level program to halt torture, including official directives condemning its use, routine criminal investigations to be instituted into reports of torture, the prosecution of torturers, the protection of those making complaints of torture, and legislation to prohibit the use of confessions or other evidence obtained through torture in criminal proceedings.

* Introduce safeguards against torture in law and in administrative procedures including requirements that all detainees be brought promptly before a judicial authority, that prompt and regular access to families, defense counsel and a doctor of one's choice be assured, and that incommunicado detention outside the supervision of the courts never be tolerated.

* Safeguards should include legislation to prohibit the holding of detainees anywhere that has not been publicly acknowledged as a place of detention and to provide accurate and up to date central records of all detentions, the latter to be available for consultation by the families and lawyers of detainees.

* The same authorities should not be responsible both for the interrogations of detainees and for the custodial care of these detainees, in order to increase the protection of detainees by introducing a further element of supervision; the responsibility of Sudan Security both for the maintenance of detention centers and for interrogations should be ended.

* Detention facilities under the sole supervision of Sudan Security or other security agencies, notably the unacknowledged centers known as "ghost houses," should be closed, and no further detention facilities should be established that are not publicly acknowledged and regulated in accord with the law. Unrestricted access to the former "ghost houses" should be allowed for members of the human rights community, the press and the diplomatic corps to verify their closure.

* The section of Kober Prison built especially for security detainees should be removed from the jurisdiction of Sudan Security and restored to the jurisdiction of the General Administration of Prisons.

* Halt the execution of punishments that are inherently cruel, inhuman or degrading, in particular the death penalty in any form, whether prescribed through some form of legal process law or through extrajudicial executions, with a view towards the effective abolition of these punishments in law and practice.

* In the context of measures to eliminate cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, halt the use of shackling within the prison system except in situations permitted under international standards, such as to prevent escape during transfer from one facility to another.

* Fully disclose the record of military trial proceedings against the twenty-eight officers tried and executed in April 1990 for alleged involvement in a coup attempt; disclose to their families the locations of their graves and permit the families to rebury these officers. If there were others tried and executed in connection with the same attempted coup, publicly disclose their names, ranks and the trial records, and permit their families to rebury them.

* Establish an independent commission of inquiry, composed of representative experts drawn from civil society, to investigate evidence of torture, summary executions, and forcible "disappearances" with full powers to receive official information, its report to be made public. The scope of this enquiry should include the summary executions of twenty-eight army officers and possibly others with them in April 1990, the scores of executions and "disappearances" reported in Juba in 1992, as well as well-documented cases of torture such as that of Brig. al Rayah and the accused in the so-called "Explosives Case." The procedures of such an enquiry should include provisions to protect the safety of witnesses.

* Discontinue pardons or amnesties for military or security persons convicted of grave abuses of civilians or captured combatants.

The right to a fair trial and not to be arbitrarily detained

* Abolish detention solely for the exercise of freedom of expression, association and assembly as protected in international human rights law.

* Halt prolonged detention without charge in preventive detention and other forms of administrative detention; repeal or amend the National Security Act of 1995 so that warrantless arbitrary detention without charge or trial and prolonged incommunicado detention without judicial review is no longer tolerated.

* All detainees, including those now held under detention provisions in the National Security Act, should either be promptly charged or released; prisoners sentenced in unfair trials should be given the opportunity to appeal their sentences in proceedings meeting international standards for a fair trial or released.

* Discontinue trials of civilians in military courts.

* Guarantee all defendants a fair and public trial within a reasonable time, in accord with international fair trial standards, including the right to defense counsel, access to the evidence to be used against them, the right to an appeal, and sufficient time to fully exercise these rights.

Freedom of expression, opinion and association

* Lift the prohibition on political parties and permit their members to engage in free speech, free association and free assembly without harassment.

* Lift restrictions on the independence of trade unions, professional associations, ethnic. religious and other associations.

* Permit independent human rights monitors and organizations to function without interference.

* Lift arbitrary restrictions on the press and revoke the 1993 Press and Printed Materials Law; permit newspapers publishing before June 30, 1989, to reopen, including but not limited to those newspapers formerly affiliated with political parties.

* Allow free expression of independent opinion in the media, including such media as leaflets and handbills.

* Put an end to the current practice of summary closure of publications and the detention and harassment of journalists and writers for the nonviolent expression of opinions.

* Guarantee academic freedom; cease the dismissal on political grounds of academic and administrative staff in state institutions and reinstate all those who have been arbitrarily dismissed.

* Guarantee freedom of association for students in national and private universities.

Freedom of religion

* Permit adherents of all religions to worship freely and to build, purchase or rent houses of worship without obstruction. Non-Muslim congregations and churches should be permitted to carry out religious activities freely, on the same terms applying to Muslims, without discriminatory governmental interference.

* Respect the right of religious organizations to maintain charitable or humanitarian institutions, to acquire materials related to religious rights, to teach, to train leaders, and other activities; cease imposing on some religions and their activities regulations and requirements not imposed equally on all religions.

* If religious instruction continues to be offered in schools, facilitate instruction in non-Muslim religions and beliefs, so that they are available to students readily and without discrimination or coercion in their choice of religion. Respect the rights of students to receive no religious instruction if they or their families so choose.

* Convicted prisoners of all faiths should have equal access to provisions for early release offered those who take religious instruction, based on their own religions; this program now applies only to those who memorize the Qur'an (take instruction in Islam).

* Abolish criminal punishment for the offense of renouncing Islam.

* Establish the equality in law of women and of non-Muslims and punish discrimination against them.

* Protect the rights of practitioners of all religions and beliefs to equal treatment and nondiscrimination in the army, civil service, schools and other aspects of public life.

Freedom of movement

* Lift foreign travel bans established on political grounds, including those imposed through the requirement of exit visas to leave the country, and permit the movement of Sudanese to any part of their country.

* Reduce controls on travel between the north and the south; facilitate north-south travel by those current or former southern residents who wish to relocate or visit their families.

* Facilitate access to all parts of the country, particularly the Nuba Mountains and the south, for human rights monitors, human rights educators, and relief workers.

The use of force in the control of demonstrations and other public assemblies

* Train police, including the People's Police Force, in the U.N. guidelines on the use of force, and incorporate these guidelines into police regulations and training materials concerned with crowd control.

* Prevent National Islamic Front forces and other forces not established and regulated by law from taking any part in the suppression of demonstrations or other police work

* Protect those exercising their freedom of expression, association and assembly from attacks, including attacks by government supporters.

* Investigate reports of the excessive use of force in the context of government programs to clear communities of squatters and the displaced, in the government response to student demonstrations in September 1995, and in the raids on the Omdurman Ahliya University campus in September and November 1995, and make the findings public.

* Disband and disarm National Islamic Front militias and security forces and other such quasi-governmental forces that are not formally established and regulated by law and open to public scrutiny and accountability before the law.

Human rights and the internally displaced

* Halt the destruction of homes of the internally displaced and squatters in Khartoum and other urban areas until the right to judicial review and appeal, suspended by the 1990 Amendment to the Civil Transactions Act, is restored; award compensation without discrimination on account of social origin, race, religion, or other status.

* Halt the forced relocation of internally displaced and squatters from the Khartoum area to areas far distant from urban centers and work opportunities.

* Halt the arbitrary relocation of persons living in rural areas from their villages under the pretext of military operations , and permit those who have been relocated in the past to return to their homes.

* Allow freedom of movement and residence, so that displaced people and squatters can return to their former homes if they wish.

* Compensate those who have lost homes and possessions in past relocations.

National service and the Popular Defense Forces (PDF)

· End conscription of those under the age of eighteen into the armed forces and the nominally voluntary PDF militia; prevent the participation in hostilities of those aged under eighteen. Conscription should be enforced only through procedures established in law, and without resort to the use of force in violation of international standards.

* Introduce legislation and procedures to provide alternative civilian service for those who object to national service in the military on conscientious grounds.

* Eliminate measures to compel non-Muslims performing national service or undergoing PDF training and service to take part in Islamic education programs and worship.

* Eliminate the requirement that any person serve in the Popular Defense Forces as a condition of government employment, university matriculation or similar activities unless and until its training programs are modified to respect the right of all participants freely to exercise their own religion.

* PDF training programs offering prisoners who choose to participate early release should be modified to allow participation by non-Muslims without prejudice to their rights not to be compelled to change their religion.

* Establish full accountability for abuses committed by the Popular Defense Forces and associated tribal militias, through transparent disciplinary and criminal procedures.

Stopping slavery and related practices

* Establish urgently a program to put an end to the capture and exploitation of children and other civilians during army and militia raids and their confinement in slavery-like conditions, to include public reporting of the measures taken.

* As an urgent priority, identify and release those held in captivity by members of tribal militias (including militias of the Baggara), Popular Defense Forces, military, and others; investigate all reports of the kidnaping and/or enslavement of civilians, especially children, with a view to releasing all those held against their will and/or forced to work without compensation, and prosecuting those in any way responsible for their capture or captivity or who benefited from their forced labor.

* Investigate all reports of children and adults held against their will as servants or laborers, paid or unpaid, and all reports of their physical or sexual abuse, and prosecute those found responsible;

* Establish, in consultation with international agencies with experience in locating missing persons, a central agency responsible for assisting family members to locate their missing relatives, and assure funding necessary for its operations, including publicity and full cooperation with community representatives seeking to trace community members taken in army and militia raids.

* As part of a comprehensive program to eliminate slavery and slavery-like practices, enforce fully Sudanese law punishing child abuse, kidnaping, hostage-taking, and forced or child labor, with regular, public reports on relevant criminal investigations, prosecutions and convictions. Investigate and prosecute officials and police officers who fail to enforce criminal laws in this regard.

* Ensure that the armed forces, security agencies and militia issue and enforce orders to halt the capture of children and other civilians who are not detained for recognizable criminal offenses, their exploitation and their transfer within and from the war zones.

* Institute procedures to prevent military personnel, militia and others under military jurisdiction from taking unrelated persons with them from war zones or garrison towns, and especially prevent such persons from using government transport to move unrelated persons.

* Prevent transportation by adults of unrelated children from state to state without appropriate authorization. Where the adult is of a different ethnic background from the child, the circumstances of such transport should be closely scrutinized.

* Introduce legislation to provide increased safeguards against slavery, including measures outlawing the unpaid the employment of non-family members of whatever age, and ratifying the International Labor Organization (ILO) Minimum Age Convention of 1973 (No. 138).

* Cooperate fully with the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child, the ILO, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the U.N. Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery, and the U.N. Commission on Human Rights' Special Rapporteur on Sudan in their investigations of reported slavery-like abuses.

* Request international cooperation, particularly technical assistance and advice, to pay urgent and due regard to reports of slavery and forced labor.

The rights of children

* Continue with the family reunification program for street children held in government camps.

* Halt the random capture of children from the streets and their transfer to closed camps without notification of their families. Children presently in the camps should be reunified with their families where possible, while care for homeless children and those whose families cannot be traced should be provided through programs which respect freedom of religion.

* Investigate the allegations of ill-treatment in the government's closed camps for street children and punish those responsible.

* In any detention of street children believed to be at risk, a first priority should be to establish contact with the child's family or guardian; prolonged custodial care of street children should be subject to judicial supervision, while due process guarantees should be present in any case in which children are brought into the criminal justice system. Alternatives to incarceration or confinement in closed custodial establishments should be provided where feasible.

* Ratify the African Convention on the Rights of the Child and introduce legislation to implement its provisions for the protection of children.

Human rights protection and the war in the south

* Respect international humanitarian law and human rights law, prohibiting the targeting of civilian and civilian objects in military operations, indiscriminate attacks, looting and unnecessary destruction of civilian property.

* Accord members of the SPLA or other rebel groups who are captured or otherwise hors de combat humane treatment; cease government secrecy concerning the capture and fate of suspected combatants.

* Investigate abuses committed by members of the Sudan Armed Forces, security services, militias and associated former rebel groups working with them. Bring to trial those held responsible for such abuses.

* Compensate those whose property has been looted or deliberately destroyed in violation of international standards during military or other government operations.

* Affirm the right of non-combatants in war-affected areas to receive food, medicine, and other relief, and cease actions that might prejudice their receipt of such relief. The U.N. Operation Lifeline Sudan, the ICRC and other relief programs should be allowed to proceed in accordance withhumanitarian need, without hindrance. Provide safe land, river and air access for the provision of humanitarian aid.

· Permit the ICRC to visit persons detained in connection with the conflict according to its specific criteria.

Recommendations to the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army and other armed rebel groups:

* Respect international humanitarian and human rights law, particularly the prohibitions on targeting civilians, indiscriminate attacks on civilians, and destruction or looting of civilian property.

* Refrain from involuntarily recruiting anyone.

* Refrain from using children under the age of eighteen as combatants and prevent them from participating in hostilities.

* Facilitate voluntary family reunification.

* Permit the ICRC to visit persons detained in connection with the conflict according to its specific criteria.

* Cease taking hostages.

* Provide safe land, river and air access for the provision of humanitarian aid.

* Cooperate with human rights monitors and educators, and facilitate their access to all parts of the country.

* Affirm the right of noncombatants in war-affected areas to receive food, medicine, and other relief, and not undertake any action that might prejudice their receipt of such relief. In particular, cease looting relief barges and the equipment of relief agencies.

· Refrain from taking food or non-food items, directly or indirectly, from civilians, particularly those at or below the subsistence level; any supplies taken by military personnel should be paid for.

* Abolish political detention, torture, ill-treatment and the death penalty in any form.

* Launch public investigations and permit investigations by others into allegations of human rights abuses committed by each rebel force's own members, and take disciplinary action against those responsible for such abuses, including but not limited to the July 1995 attack on Ganyliel, the October 1994 attack on Akot, the disappearance of Dr. Karlo Madut in 1994, the killing of Martin Majieur in 1993, and the killings of three relief workers and one journalist in 1992.

* Cooperate with international agencies willing to provide instruction in humanitarian law to combatants.

Recommendations to the United Nations Security Council:

* Institute an arms embargo on the parties to the conflict in Sudan, with special attention to bombs and aircraft used to deliver them.

Recommendations to U.N. Commission on Human Rights and High Commissioner for Human Rights:

* Assure that the proposals of the special rapporteur on human rights in Sudan for establishing three U.N. human rights monitors to be based in Eritrea, Kenya and Uganda are accepted by all necessary parties and appropriately funded, and that their duties include observation, investigation, bringing to the attention of the responsible authorities, and making public violations of humanitarian and human rights laws by all parties. The monitors should have access to all parts of Sudan.

* Establish a civilian-directed and staffed program of human rights education for all regions of Sudan. This program should be a supplement to, not a substitute for, the human rights monitors.

* Persuade the government to continue and expand upon its "open-door" policy in the field of human rights.

* Recommend to the government that it permit the extension of OLS emergency relief operations to all areas where war-affected civilians live in the Nuba Mountains and other disputed areas of the country.

Recommendations to UNICEF, ILO, U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child, the Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, and other concerned U.N. bodies, mechanisms and agencies:

· conduct voluntary family reunification; where small groups of minors are separated from their larger tribe, efforts should be made to reunite them in the safest location, even if that means reuniting them outside of Sudan or from one country of refuge to another. This task should receive the cooperation of all U.N. and NGO agencies.

* UNICEF and the ILO should establish and fund programs to effectively promote the adoption of national legislation and implementing programs to ban child labor, slavery, and slavery-like practices.

* UNICEF, the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child, the Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights' special rapporteur on Sudan, and the ILO monitor the application of the slavery and forced labor conventions to Sudan, and thatall send fact-finding missions to investigate the reported abuses and the mechanisms the government is employing to confront the problem.

* UNICEF, the ILO, and the Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery should work with the government of Sudan to establish government mechanisms to effectively assist families in the search for kidnaped or missing family members.

Recommendations to the African Commission on Human and People's Rights

* Conduct, as soon as possible, a fact-finding mission to Sudan with regard to its emergency situation and serious violations of human and people's rights, and make a public written report to the session of the African Commission to be held in October 1996, on the following topics: summary executions; torture and ill-treatment; arbitrary arrests and fundamental fairness at trial; slavery and slave-like practices; freedom of religion, expression, assembly, association, and movement; treatment of displaced persons and squatters in Khartoum; and observance of human rights in the war in southern Sudan, the Nuba Mountains, and eastern Sudan.

Recommendations to the "Friends of IGAAD" (the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, the Netherlands, Italy, Norway), the European Union, and other concerned governments and bodies

* Support an arms embargo on all parties to the conflict, including by urging major exporters China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, South Africa, and others, to stop arms sales or transfers to Sudan. Similarly urge countries or others supplying arms to the SPLA and other armed rebel groups to cease their arms sales or transfers. Establish a multilateral monitoring mechanism for the implementation of an arms embargo. Members of the European Union should enforce the E.U. arms embargo of Sudan established as the common position of the European Union by council decision of March 16, 1994.

* Support the creation of a full-time U.N. human rights monitoring team, and provide financing for it.

* Support the creation of a civilian directed and staffed program of human rights education for all regions of Sudan. This program should be a supplement to, not a substitute for, the human rights monitors. The recommended U.N. human rights monitors and educational program should not be funneled through the government, the SPLA or other rebel factions or their agencies.

* Maintain pressure on the Sudan government and the SPLA and other rebel factions to permit access to relief operations.

* Use their votes in international financial institutions to freeze Sudanese requests for loans or disbursements, including from the African Development Bank, until patterns of gross human rights abuses are eliminated.

* Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Zaire and other countries receiving Sudanese refugees should permit those unaccompanied boys in Sudan or in other countries to be reunited with their parents or closest surviving relatives who are refugees in their territories pursuant to their obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 10.

Recommendations to nongovernmental organizations working in Sudan

* Bring to the attention of the appropriate bodies, including the parties to the conflict, U.N. agencies, and donors, abuses committed by the parties to the conflict in possible violation of international standards of humanitarian law and human rights.

* Routinely include the human rights situation and the human rights consequences of a relief operation in field reports, country reports, and reports to the public of all the relief agencies concerned.

2

The National Security Act of 1995 provides for prolonged arbitrary detention in security cases of up to six months without judicial review. This is a violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), Article 9.1 The judicial review that takes place after six months of warrantless incommunicado detention is inadequate; an appointee of the chief justice, who takes a very passive view of these supervisory duties, is supposed to conduct this review.2 The government has misrepresented the status of this law to the U.N. It said in November 1995 that the 1992 National Security Act was in effect, and failed to disclose that it was replaced by a more restrictive 1995 act signed into law in May 1995.

The new law was quickly applied to facilitate the detention of the former prime minister and leader of the banned Umma Party and the mass detentions of suspected Umma Party leaders, all released, without charges, in August 1995. It was used again to cut off student protests against the government in September 1995 in the streets of Khartoum. Hundreds were detained, sometimes by NIF party security and militias; in 1996, the act was used to detain persons suspected of connections with the nascent armed opposition movement based in Eritrea, and representatives of civil society.

Sudan is in the throes of an internal armed conflict in the south and other areas, but the absence of combatants captured by the army in the thirteen years of war raises the troubling possibility that they might have been killed as a matter of government policy. The burden of explaining this anomalous situation lies heavily on the government.

THE APPLICABLE LAW

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in Article 9, states simply that "No one shall be subject to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile." Article 9 of theICCPR is designed to further protect against arbitrary arrest and detention. It provides:

1. Everyone has the right to liberty and security of person. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest or detention. No one shall be deprived of his liberty except on such grounds and in accordance with such procedures as are established by law.

2. Anyone who is arrested shall be informed, at the time of arrest, of the reasons for his arrest and shall be promptly informed of any charges against him.

3. Anyone arrested or detained on a criminal charge shall be brought promptly before a judge or other officer authorized by law to exercise judicial power and shall be entitled to trial within a reasonable time or to release. It shall not be the general rule that persons awaiting trial shall be detained in custody, but release may be subject to guarantees to appear for trial, at any other stage of the judicial proceedings, and, should occasion arise, for execution of the judgement.

4. Anyone who is deprived of his liberty by arrest or detention shall be entitled to take proceedings before a court, in order that court may decide without delay on the lawfulness of his detention and order his release if the detention is not lawful.

5. Anyone who has been victim of unlawful arrest or detention shall have an enforceable right to compensation.

The African Charter provides similar protection against arbitrary arrest.3

The purpose of ICCPR Article 9 (1) is to require states to spell out in legislation the grounds on which an individual may be deprived of his liberty and the procedures to be used. This is to make clear that "[n]ot every policeman (orother state functionary) is entitled to decide at his discretion, and on his own responsibility, who can be arrested, why and how."4

Even where the government has complied with its own laws, an arrest may still be regarded as arbitrary. An "arbitrary" arrest is not limited to an "illegal" arrest. "Arbitrary" also means "unjust."

Arbitrary arrest or detention implied an arrest or detention which was incompatible with the principles of justice or with the dignity of the human person irrespective of whether it had been carried out in conformity with the law.5

Other commentators have emphasized that the purpose of the ICCPR's prohibition on arbitrary arrest is to protect individuals from despotic legislation and to establish that deprivations of liberty as occurred under the Nazi regime are not consistent with human rights merely because they were enacted into national law.6

"Political" detainees are generally those held in preventive (or administrative) detention in Sudan. They are rarely charged with any crime or brought before a court by the authorities. Article 9 (4) of the ICCPR provides that such detainees have the right to judicial supervision of the lawfulness of their arrest. It states that anyone "deprived of his liberty by arrest or detention shall be entitled to take proceedings before a court, in order that that court may decide without delay on the lawfulness of his detention and order his release if the detention is not lawful."

The U.N. Human Rights Committee, created under Article 28 of the ICCPR, has found that the purpose of Article 9 (4) of the ICCPR is to ensure that it is a court that reviews detention, not merely any authority regulated by law, and that the reviewing authority must possess a degree of objectivity and independence to exercise adequate control over detention. It held that a person detained by orderof an administrative body or authority has the right to have that decision reviewed in a court of law.7

Significantly, Article 9 (4) gives the detainee the right to go to court for a decision "without delay." Even during states of emergency, a remedy like habeas corpus must be available.8 Thus the government may not erect barriers to a prompt judicial decision on the lawfulness of the reasons for detention. "Judicial" means providing the fundamental guarantees of judicial procedures, including an "opportunity to be heard either in person, or where necessary, through some form of representation."9

To exercise this right to a hearing under Article 9 (4), the detainee must have notice of the reasons for the detention and access to legal counsel. The right to counsel, recognized in Article 14 (3) of the ICCPR and in the U.N. Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers,10 is necessary to make the other rights in Article 9 of the ICCPR effective. The rights to a hearing and to acknowledgment of the detention are also essential to prevent forcible "disappearance."11

In order to prevent torture, the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, Or Degrading Treatment or Punishment provides in Article 10:

1. Each State Party shall ensure that education and information regarding the prohibition against torture are fully included in the training of law enforcement personnel, civil or military, medical personnel, public officials, and other persons who may be involved in the custody, interrogation or treatment of any individual subjected to any form of arrest, detention or imprisonment.12

Where there are complaints of torture, the Convention against Torture requires that the competent authorities promptly investigate.13 In order to have safeguards against his or her rights not to be tortured, the detainee must have access to these authorities.14 This obligation may not be suspended in times of emergency.

THE NATIONAL SECURITY ACT OF 1995

The National Security Act of 1995, as amended by the Transitional National Assembly (TNA),15 on its face violates the prohibition on arbitrary arrest and detention of Article 9 of the ICCPR. The act does not permit prompt review by a judicial authority of the reasons for detention. Instead, it makes judicial review of preventive detention impossible before six months of incommunicado detention have elapsed, and erects a bar to proceedings against any official responsible for this and other human rights violations. It also violates international law in that it does not provide for any effective supervision of security detention, particularly in unacknowledged places of detention, known as "ghost houses." It permits a situation in which torture and disappearance may occur unchecked.

This National Security Act of 1995 is labeled "Top Secret" and government officials, when asked for a copy, claimed they did not have one. Nevertheless, Human Rights Watch obtained a copy of the act and its amendment through unofficial channels in Sudan. For unknown reasons, the government of Sudan, in its statement submitted to the U.N. in response to the interim November 1995 human rights report by the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights, refers not to the 1995 National Security Act but to the act of 1990, as amended in 1991 and 1992.16 To the best knowledge of Human Rights Watch, the National Security Act of 1990 and its amendments were abrogated by the provisional National Security Act order of November 1994.

The National Security Act in effect at the time of our May-June 1995 visit to Sudan, and still in effect as of the date of this report, was the act of 1995, as promulgated by the president in November 1994, amended by the TNA in its thirty-fifth session on April 11, 1995, and signed by President al Bashir and TNA Speaker Khalifa on May 2, 1995. Indeed, General Administrator of Prisons Maj.-Gen. al Shaikh al Rayah referred to the National Security Act of 1995 in a statement published by the official news agency during a release of security detainees on August 26, 1995.17 We analyze the provisions of the 1995 act because we conclude that the prior acts are not in effect, despite the government's representation to the U.N.

The 1995 act divides up the security apparatus into internal and external security sections.18 According to a list of detainees given by the government to the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) on May 3, 1995, persons then detained pursuant to the National Security Act were suspected or accused of offenses in the following security categories: economic security (iqtisadi), state security (wilayat), security of the apparatus (amn al jihaz),19 African countries (al Ifrikiyeh), Arab countries (al Arabiyeh), the south (al janoub),20 operations (al amaliyat),21 and central administration (al idarah al markazia).22 This suggests that security's internal and external divisions include these departments.

There are two provisions pursuant to which persons may be detained without a court order under the National Security Act of 1995. One is Article 37 (1), permitting the National Security Council to authorize "preventive detention" to "preserve public peace" for a period of three months, renewable for anotherthree months. This six-month period is renewable only with the consent of a "competent judge."23

Art. 37. Preventive detention and judicial supervision.

1. The Council may order the preventive detention of any person to preserve public peace for a period of three months, renewable for another three months.

2. Renewal of detention is not permitted after the expiration of the period stated in section (1) without the approval of the competent judge.24

Sudan Security thus may avoid judicial review for six months by simple order of the National Security Council, a body composed of the president and other members of the executive branch appointed by him, and the speaker of the assembly, a position held since March 1996 by Dr. Hassan al Turabi.25 It is not a court of law, which is the sole authority that may review the detention decision. This violates Article 9 of the ICCPR's requirement of judicial supervision "without delay" of the reasons for administrative detention. Nor is the requirement of notice and a hearing met.

Article 36 of the National Security Act of 1995, the second provision for detention without court order, permits the director of security to extend the period of detention from seventy-two hours26 to one month, and requires the director to explain the reasons for an extension beyond the first seventy-two hours.

Article 36 (1) states that each member shall have the following powers:

B. With the exception of cases where the accused is caught in the act or in emergency situations, to arrest or detain any person for a period of seventy-two hours for purposes of interrogation and investigation, provided that the director [of the combined entity of security] may issue an order to extend the period of interrogation and investigation for a period not exceeding one month, explaining the reasons for such an extension.27

Although the act says the director must explain his reasons, it does not say to whom the explanation is to be given. Even if it were to be given to the detainee, the period of one month in the act between detention and notice of reasons for detention is also too long a delay under the ICCPR. Nor does the director of security qualify as a "court" under Article 9 (4) of the ICCPR. In any event it is impossible to establish who acts when because none of these proceedings are public nor does the detainee have any notice of them, if indeed they are held.

The only possibilities for legal review are by a designated justice of the Supreme Court after the statutory period of six months has elapsed under Article 37, or under the mandate apparently given to this appointee of the chief justice of the Supreme Court in Article 3 of the National Security Act of 1995, to "supervise preventive custody and inspect detention facilities."

While Article 37 provides for judicial review of the preventive detention, it does not say who has standing to bring a complaint. Most attorneys interviewed agree that the detainee does not have standing to bring a petition for his release. This conclusion is reinforced by the fact that the articles of the 1991 National Security Act giving the detainee the right to petition the court (or the attorney general28) were deleted from the 1995 act. When asked specifically by Human Rights Watch whether a detainee or his advocate could bring suit if he were in security custody, the chief justice and deputy chief justice of the Supreme Court -the supervising justice appointed under the act - avoided the question with a rhetorical shrug, "Why can't someone bring a suit to court?" and claimed lack of knowledge of the recently enacted National Security Act.29

The public officials responsible for the detention are immune from suit. Article 38 of the National Security Act of 1995 bars all civil and criminal proceedings against security members, except for those not related to their work. Criminal acts related to the work of the security agent are not punishable in any civil or criminal proceeding.

Article 38: Members and collaborators shall enjoy the following privileges:

(b) Without prejudice to the provisions of this law and without prejudice to any right of compensation from the state, it shall not be permissible to take any civil or criminal proceedings against the member except after the approval of the director who shall give such approval whenever it becomes evident that the issue is not related to the official work of the member.30

Nor will any court take jurisdiction of such a case. The National Security Act has achieved its deterrent intent. No attorney will petition a court for relief if he knows beforehand that his client has no standing, that the only court with jurisdiction is indifferent to security detainees, and that the relevant public officials are immune from suit.31

THE REALITY

Security detainees released in 1995 uniformly relate that they were not informed of the reasons for detention and had no right to counsel. Those detained longer than six months had no judicial review or remedy. One security detainee, whose case is described below, was told that he would not be released in the general amnesty of August 1995 because there was (ostensibly) no paperwork done on his case - despite the fact that he was detained on January 29, 1995, and his detention already exceeded the six-month limit.

Detainees released in late 1995 said that security officers led them to believe that the law applicable to preventive detention included a one hundred-day limit - less than the statutory maximum of six months, but still too long to meet due process requirements.

Security detainees were told that any agent of "officer" rank was empowered to extend the initial seventy-two hour detention period to a total of ten days. A "department" director may add one month to the ten days, for a total of forty days. The director of security may extend that period by two additional months, one month at a time. These limits do not appear in the 1995 National Security Act and seem to have been self-imposed by security.

Accordingly, based on what their captors told them, detainees expected to be released one hundred days from the date of arrest, and this timetable seems to have been followed in many cases, although not all. Some detainees spent up to two additional weeks in detention, awaiting the completion of formalities and paper work. Furthermore, since some detainees were told they were not officially entered in the records at the beginning of their detention, their day count could start whenever the officer in charge chose. As long as the detainee is not "registered," or registration is not acknowledged, security may maintain total deniability should it decide to disappear or kill the detainee.

The detainees might be held all or part of the time in "ghost houses," which are unofficial Sudan Security detention places, in security offices, or in military custody on a base or in a military intelligence facility. Detainees usually are moved several times before they are released. It appears in early 1996 that Khartoum security detainees are kept for fewer days in the ghost houses. Most are sent to the security section in Kober Prison after that.

THE ROLE OF THE SUPREME COURT

While in theory there is judicial review of preventive detention under Article 3 which outlines the supervisory duty of the Supreme Court over preventivecustody, in reality this review does not function. The chief justice of the Supreme Court, whose duty it is under this statute to appoint a justice of the Supreme Court to supervise preventive custody, said he was unaware of the terms of this act in June 1995, six months after it was issued by the president and one month after it was amended by the TNA and passed into law. He protested that it was not the duty of the Supreme Court to monitor those in security detention and free those who had been in detention longer than the maximum statutory periods, absent a petition to the Supreme Court.32

He is wrong. Under Article 3 of the act, it is the duty of the designated justice of the Supreme Court to "supervise" preventive custody. This means the Supreme Court must take an active role, not merely wait passively for someone to bring a case to its attention. The judiciary also has an obligation to supervise preventive detention pursuant to the ICCPR, Article 9 (4), the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Article 11,33 and the U.N. Declaration on Forced Disappearances, Article 9 (1).34

It appears that the Supreme Court has never taken any serious action with regard to an illegally prolonged preventive detention under the prior version of the National Security Act. The deputy chief justice said in June 1995 that, in the ten months since he had been appointed under the prior act to receive complaints of detentions, he had received a petition from only one attorney. He said he had then inquired of the situation at Sudan Security, and the detainee was freed before security replied.35 We understand several weeks elapsed between the judicial inquiry and security's release of the detainee. The deputy chief justice took no affirmative steps to prevent prolonged security detentions, nor did he think he had any obligation to do so. In a later case, Hasan Ahmad Osman was detained by security on June 12, 1995. His family appealed to Deputy Chief Justice Abu Geseesa and the detainee was released in January 1996, more than six months after detention.

Past public statements by spokespersons for the judiciary indicate that the judicial blind eye currently turned to security detainees' legal rights is not a new phenomenon. In August 1992 Supreme Court Judge Abdel Rahman Sherfi, the official spokesman of the judiciary, when asked about political detainees held by security, said that the judiciary carried out inspection visits to ensure that the rights of political prisoners were respected. He denied the existence of unacknowledged detention centers where detainees were tortured and carefully confined his remarks to the situation of convicted political prisoners held in official prisons under the jurisdiction of the General Administration of the Police of Prisons and Reformation of the Ministry of Interior.36

A follow-up question on whether the judiciary had received any complaints about torture in the first year of this government (1989-90) elicited this answer: "We don't deny the probability of some individual cases [of torture in detention], circulated by some people, but no real complaints about torture in prisons reached us. Even if such cases existed, they wouldn't go beyond being isolated or unfamiliar cases with no relevance."37 This assertion is not borne out by the facts chronicled in many human rights reports on the practice of torture during those years.

In the belief that attempting to use a feckless judicial system to seek a detainee's release would be beating a dead horse, detainees and their families fall back on traditional ways of approaching officials to ask for their help - through family, personal and regional ties. They make the rounds from the attorney general's office to the ministry of the presidency to the TNA and its human rightscommittee to those reputed to hold power in the NIF, seeking to locate someone with the power to act on their behalf. All these informal avenues of redress depend on the mercy - or whim - of the powerful, not upon legal rights. Those with no strong family influence or contacts in powerful circles risk being neglected and spending comparatively longer periods in detention. Southerners and the poor are the primary victims of this arbitrary system of petition, since they do not have powerful contacts.

The deputy chair of the TNA and chair of its human rights committee, Angelo Beda, regularly receives petitions from relatives of those held in preventive detention. This committee writes letters of inquiry to Sudan Security, and in some cases, Beda says, is successful in winning the release of the detainee. He provided copies of his correspondence to Human Rights Watch, which showed that inquiries were in fact made on behalf of several security detainees.38 These formal and informal efforts made on behalf of detainees are worthwhile, but they provide only the slimmest thread of restraint on security, and are no substitute for a real judicial remedy such as a habeas corpus procedure.

TREND TOWARD RESTRICTION OF RIGHTS

In our meeting with the chair of the TNA Human Rights Committee, we were told that the TNA's 1995 amendments to the National Security Act improved the proposed 1994 act by diminishing the amount of time a person could be held in preventive detention before being brought before a judge. That was not born out by a reading of the act and its amendment, however. In Article 37 the TNA lengthened the time in preventive detention before judicial review from the proposed three months to six months.

Indeed, the National Security Act of 1995 has omitted several safeguards provided to detainees under the National Security Act of 1990, as amended,39although these were in practice rarely honored. For instance, under the 1991 National Security Act a security detainee could be held for three months without an order. At the end of that time any order of extension of the preventive detention had to be submitted, with reasons justifying the extension, to representatives of the attorney general's chamber or the judge within three days of the issuance of the extension order.40 The attorney general's representative or the judge were required to assess the reasons after "hearing from" the detainee or reading a memorandum by the detainee, and could "summarily" order the extension of the detention period, or could order the detainee's release.41

The flaw under the National Security Act of 1991 was that this procedure might be held by the representative of the attorney general, an executive, not a judicial official, although the ICCPR, Article 9, requires the hearing be held before a judicial official. The choice of the official - whether an attorney general representative or judge - conducting the hearing was up to security or other detaining authority. The 1992 amendment deleted reference to the attorney general, so that only the judge could order an extension of the detention period. The deletion of the reference to the representative of the attorney general was the only significant amendment to the act in 1992.

Even under the 1992 National Security Act, however, there was no obligation to hold a hearing at which the detainee had the right to be present, nor was there any right to counsel, nor to examine witnesses, or any other due process rights. The judge could "summarily" renew detention in three month periods, indefinitely, without any due process protections whatsoever, if he decided that "national security" called for it.42

The only approximations to due process in that act were the provisions that the detainee "shall be informed after a reasonable period of his detention of the reasons justifying his detention" (Article (A) (2), and that he had the explicit right "whenever he so wishes to raise a memorandum to the council about his detentionor his treatment." (Article 40 (A) (3)). This falls far short of the right to a hearing, however.

With regard to the detainee's physical integrity, the 1991 National Security Act specified that "it shall not be permitted to expose the detainee to any physical harm or to treat him in a beastly manner." (Article 40 (A) (4)). To enforce that prohibition, the next article added that "The detainee may complain to the representative of the attorney general's office or to the judge against the nonobservance of limitations on detention specified in this article and the representative of the attorney general or the judge may, after expedited examination, issue the order that he deems suitable to correct the injustice." (Article 40 (A) (5)).

These are some of the provisions favorable to the detainee that the government of Sudan quoted in its submission to the U.N. in November 1995 in reply to the special rapporteur's human rights report.43 The others are that any released security detainee or acquitted person shall not be re-detained for one month from the date of release or acquittal or with the prior permission of the judge.44 All these provisions, however flawed and unobserved in practice, were deleted from the National Security Act of 1995: it makes no reference to any right to know the accusations, opportunity to petition any authority, or judicial review after three months. The 1995 act is also conspicuously silent about physical harm to the detainee and places no limit on the power of security to redetain someone who has just been acquitted or released from security. The National Security Act of 1995 is a step backward.

PROLONGED ARBITRARY DETENTION

Even though the person detained under the National Security Act of 1990 as amended had theoretical rights, in practice these were not respected. It is unlikely, judging from past performance and interviews with officials and others, that the 1995 act's requirement for judicial review after six months of detention will be honored, either.

Security detainees who have been released without charges claim never to have had hearings of any kind, no matter how long they have spent in detention. Several ex-detainees interviewed by Human Rights Watch, or whose cases were reviewed by Human Rights Watch, were held in preventive detention for two yearswhile the 1991 act was in effect. They were held in security detention, usually in unofficial places of detention or "ghost houses" and often moved around between states, without any authorization ever being sought from any court, unless it was in a secret proceeding of which the detainee had no notice. Their detention was illegal not only under the ICCPR but also under the national security laws of Sudan.

Among those released in 1994 and 1995 who as far as is known were held for more than three months without any judicial order - as provided by the National Security Act of 1992 then in effect - were alleged Communist Party leaders Yusif Hussein Mohamed (detained December 1992, released May 1995), Mohamed Babikr Mukhtar (secretary general of the banned Sudan Employees Union, detained May 1994, released May 1995)45 and Farouk Ali Zakaria (detained December 1992, released October 1994); and Salah Samared, Mustafa Abd al Rahman, Abdul Raouf Ebn Oaf, Fadlalla Burma Nasir (minister of defense under the Transitional Military Council in April 1985); two businessmen detained in 1991, Abdulmoniem Awad Allah Salih (engineer) and Muhsin Abdel Hamid (ex-army officer), and others. Some had been arrested several times before;46 several have been rearrested, including Yusif Hussein Mohamed and Mohamed Babikr (see below). There are reports of others held for extended periods without any charges or judicial recourse, including Mostafa Abdel Rahman Mostafa (in detention since December 1992, first in a ghost house then in early 1994 sent to Suakin Prison, denied family visits and necessary medication).47

On May 3, 1995 the government released to the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists a list of persons detained pursuant to the National Security Act; there were eighty persons on the list, which was compiled at the request of the ICJ. This list quickly became outdated by the security detentions of hundreds of Umma Party members following the May 16, 1995 detention of Umma Party leader and former prime minister Sadiq al Mahdi.

The list given to the ICJ omitted several well-known long term detainees such as Yusif Hussein Mohamed and Mohamed Babikr Muktar and others who were released two weeks later on the occasion of the Al Eid holiday in mid-May1995, and other less well-known detainees, some of whom Human Rights Watch sought to visit in May and who were not released for several months.48 Other people omitted from the ICJ list include a group of members of the Arab Ba'thist (Revival) Party: Mohamed Salman, Adil Fouad, Mohamed Babiker Musa, Fathi Nouri, and Abu Ras (who spent more than a year in detention when he was released May 7, 1995). The reason for omitting these security detainees from the ICJ list was not stated. If political detainees were held by security pursuant to legislation other than the National Security Act, it is not clear just what legislation that could be.

Furthermore, the director of Kober Prison said that before the release of thirty security detainees from Kober on the Al Eid holiday in mid-May 1995, there were ninety security detainees in Kober, ten more than appeared on the list given to the ICJ.49 Security detainees also were held in other cities and other Khartoum locations.

ARRESTS OF SADIQ AL MAHDI AND UMMA PARTY MEMBERS

The arbitrary nature of security detention under the 1995 National Security Act was illustrated by the crackdown on Sadiq al Mahdi, the former prime minister of Sudan (1986-89), who was deposed by the government now in power, and some 200 members of the banned Umma Party of which he is head. Al Mahdi was detained at his home in Omdurman on May 16, 1995. This was a high profile detention due to Sadiq al Mahdi's status as former prime minister and the Umma Party's history as one of the two largest political parties in Sudan before all parties were banned in 1989. Family members pursued various formal and informal avenues in seeking his release, but received no response to their many petitions to many government authorities. Al Mahdi also is the leader of the Ansar (Helpers) religious sect on which the Umma Party is based.50

The detention came less than a week after al Mahdi, speaking during the important religious holiday of Al Eid as a religious leader, delivered a sermon highly critical of the government. When taken into custody he sent a note that he was not going to talk to security and that he wanted a fair, open trial of any charges against him.51

He was held in incommunicado detention for more than three months, until his release in late August 1995 during a visit of European trade negotiators to Khartoum. Initially he was held in the security section of Kober Prison. His family was permitted to give food and clothes to security, but they never received, as they had during his prior detentions, any note from him acknowledging receipt of these items.

Human Rights Watch inquired about the reasons for his detention, as al Mahdi was never charged with any crime. Some government officials claimed they were not privy to the reasons. TNA Deputy Chair Angelo Beda said al Mahdi had been detained because he had been in "negotiations" with the government in early 1995 and had betrayed the confidential nature of these negotiations in his speech during Al Eid. He claimed that al Mahdi could have made the same speech without being arrested but for his negotiations.52 The TNA chair was, in contrast, cited in a press interview two months later stating that Sadiq al Mahdi would be tried shortly for attempting to overthrow the government, having links with the SPLA leader John Garang, and helping to organize a military force to take the war to the north.53 Another government official suggested that the detention was in relation to the preparation of an opposition meeting in Asmara, Eritrea, aimed at launching an invasion of Sudan, although no charges were ever brought.54 It appears to Human Rights Watch that he was detained on account of his exercise of his free speech rights.

After Umma Party and Ansar leaders addressed a memorandum to the government calling for their leader's release, the authorities unleashed a campaign of arrests of Umma Party and Ansar leaders throughout Sudan. An estimated 200were detained, some for as long as four months.55 In Atbara, at least fifty other Umma leaders were in prison in mid August 1995.

These prisoners, held arbitrarily and without legal process since May, were discreetly released in the months after their detention, starting with the oldest first. The government held on to Sadiq al Mahdi as external pressure mounted, and finally released him and thirty-one other security detainees in late August 1995, on the eve of a visit to Sudan by the African, Caribbean and Pacific States-European Union (ACP-EU) to evaluate whether the European Union should resume financial cooperation with Sudan under the Lome Convention. The ACP-EU delegation made human rights one of its top priorities.56

MASS RELEASES OF MAY 1995 AND AUGUST 1995

One of the ways in which those detained without legal process are freed is by virtue of the "largesse" of the powerful, often in the context of international pressure. Releases are represented as "humanitarian" measures or other generous acts. Thus thirty detainees were released from prolonged preventive detention in Kober Prison on the holiday of Al Eid in May 1995, but also immediately after the U.N. Commission on Human Rights met and expressed its deep concern over human rights in Sudan,57 and as Sudan was attempting to better its human rights image through these releases and through a series of visits paid by international human rights organizations. Amnesty International, in addition, was then waging a major campaign against human rights violations in Sudan.

Similarly, President al Bashir announced the release of all women prisoners who had children, on August 17, 1995 at the preparatory proceedings onthe Beijing world conference on women's rights.58 Reportedly, there were more than 1,000 women in jail59 and 300 children who were held with their mothers. The director general of prisons in July had warned of a marked deterioration in the country's jails with prisoners going hungry and some dying for lack of medicine and urged that women with children and others be released.60

The release in August 1995 of former prime minister Sadiq al Mahdi and thirty-one other persons, all held in security detention without charges since May 1995, followed repeated written requests by a delegation from the African Caribbean Pacific States-European Union to meet with al Mahdi while in Sudan in late August to evaluate what assistance, if any, the E.U. would give Sudan.

The government claimed that these thirty-two were all the security detainees held.61 That is not correct, since at least Hasan Ahmad Osman, detained on June 12, 1995, remained in security detention in August: his family appealed to Deputy Chief Justice Abu Geseesa for his release. He was released in January 1996. Another security detainee not released in August was Marial Musher Klweil, detained on January 29, 1995. The thirty-two released were said to include nineteen members of the dissolved Umma Party, eight members of the dissolved Communist Party and five of the dissolved Arab Socialist Ba'thist Party.62

On the eve of the ACP-EU delegation's arrival, the president also issued a decree pardoning eighteen persons classified as political prisoners by the government, convicted in connection with the coup attempt of 1991 and the Explosives Case of 1994.63

These releases, although to be welcomed, in fact tend to show that imprisonment is not governed by the rule of law in Sudan, that caprice and political expediency rule in its stead, and that personal ties and influence trump everything else.

OTHER ARRESTS: 1995 AND 1996

Within weeks of the prisoner and security detainee releases, in September 1995, student demonstrations broke out in Khartoum and several lawyers and others among the capital's "usual suspects" were detained by security, including advocates Mustafa Abdel Gadir, Ali Ahmed al Sayyid, Bushra Abdel Karim,64 and Siddiq Yousif, Abdallah Meshawi, al Bagir Hassab al Rasoul, and Kamal al Juzuuli;65 all were the subjects of international protest, and most were released after several days in detention. Yusif Hussein Mohamed and Mohamed Babikr Mukhtar (both just released in May 1995 after prolonged arbitrary security detention), were detained again; Yusif Hussein was not released until December 6, 1995, and Mohamed Babikr and Siddiq Yousif remained in detention until mid-March 1996.66 Mohamed Hassan Wahba was arrested during the burial of Sudan Communist Party leader Izz al Diin Ali Amir. An unknown number of street children were also subjected to short-term detention by security on account of the demonstrations.

Others arrested after the demonstrations in September 1995, however, remained in security detention (in the security section of Kober Prison), including Awad Bashir, Adlaan Abdel Aziz,67 and Al Sir Ossman Babu, all university graduates apparently considered by security to have been leaders of the studentdemonstrations.68 Adlaan Abdel Aziz was released on April 25, 1996, and Al Sir Ossman Babu was still being detained.69

In early 1996 security seemed to shift its focus to persons suspected of connections with the armed opposition based in Asmara, Eritrea, the National Alliance Forces led by Gen. Abdul Aziz Khalid. No Umma Party or Democratic Unionist Party member was known to be held in security detention in early 1996, but security detained some suspected of being associated with Gen. Abdul Aziz through the National Congress Party (al Muutamar al Watani) and/or the Union of Nationalist and Democratic Forces (Ittihaad al Quwa al Wataniyya al Democratiya), both small parties that emerged during the 1986-89 period of multi-party government.

Others reportedly detained included Mustafa Awad al Karim, a pharmacist and director of a pharmaceutical company, detained at his office on January 20, 1996. He was held and interrogated in Sudan Security department of operations (al amaliyat), in Hay al Mataar section of Khartoum. He was reportedly severely beaten and tortured during the period he spent in ghost houses, Sudan Security reportedly accusing him of leading a "ring" of former union activists.70 He was transferred to the security section of Kober Prison and thereafter his family was permitted to visit him on April 23, 1996, for the first time since his January detention.71

Others, detained on January 15, 1996, included Al Sir Makki Abu Zeid, a former teacher and businessman, Ahmad Al Toam, Farah Hasan Suleiman Hajjaana, and Walid Yusuf Abu Sefeif,72 were in the security section of Kober Prison. No charges were brought against any of them and they remained in detention as of late February 1996.

According to Amnesty International, reports were received that Moslih Salim Said, a truck driver, was arrested in Kassala at the end of January and was tortured. Six other men were subsequently detained, apparently on the basis of this interrogation and torture: Lt. Gen. Ahmad al Badawi (air force, retired) and Farah Hassan Suleiman (lawyer) were detained on January 29, 1996, and Atif Mohamed Idris (medical doctor), Mohiadin Ali Daoud (former civil servant), BabikerMohamed Gharib and Osman Mohamed Gharib (mechanics) were detained on January 31, reportedly suspected of being linked to the National Alliance Forces and alleged to be responsible for organizing recruitment of northern Sudanese youth for military training in Eritrea.73

Awad al Karim Muhammad Ahmed, an engineer and the secretary general of the Trade Unions Alliance that led the 1985 uprising that overthrew President Nimeiri, was detained on February 4, 1996, and released the same month, without charges.74 In early February 1996, army officers Khalid Naasir, Abdel Waahid al Taahir, and Ibrahim Bilaal, who had been dismissed by the current government, were detained, reportedly suspected of links with the Alliance Forces.75

Among the foreigners held in the Sudan Security section of Kober Prison in early 1996 were reportedly several Egyptian Islamic militants (said to have criticized NIF leader Hassan al Turabi); a Ugandan formerly employed by the Ugandan Embassy, Muhi al Din Nasim (in detention since May 1995, suspected of being a spy); and several suspected members of the Chadian National Front, a Chadian opposition group, Abdul Malik, Abdul Maaruuf, and Adam, detained on September 15, 1995.76

Al Haadi Tanjjuur, sixty-eight, a Minister of Health employee, reportedly was taken from his sickbed in his home in Khartoum by security agents in January 1996. He is the head of the Association of North and South Funj - Southern Blue Nile (Ittihaad Shamaal wa Januub al Funj); the Funj, a marginalized ethnic group, were politically active during the period of multi- party government (1986-89).77

NO ICRC ACCESS TO PERSONS DETAINED IN CONNECTION WITH THE CONFLICT (PRISONERS OF WAR)

The Sudanese government has now admitted - for the first time, to our knowledge, and perhaps inadvertently - that it has taken prisoners in the armedconflict. In November 1995 the Sudanese government reported what it said were the statements of captured Sudanese rebels and Ugandans, claiming these prisoners said that Ugandan troops, Eritrean tank crews and "African mercenaries" took part on the side of the SPLA in the November 1995 battles with the government in Eastern Equatoria.78 Nevertheless, the government of Sudan has always rejected all requests by the ICRC to visit captured combatants and others held in connection with the conflict, steadfastly maintaining that it has no such prisoners.

Captured combatants are at great risk of being summarily executed since the government denies that it has any in captivity. They are far from their families or other institutions that might be sources of protection.

Many others, not combatants, have been detained by the government for suspected "subversive" activities. They are considered by the ICRC to be within its mandate, as persons deprived of their liberty for reasons connected with the conflict. Since these detainees are usually not detained in areas of combat, there often are witnesses to their capture and the government cannot easily deny that it has them in custody. They include those detained in Wau in April 1995, mentioned below.

Although the term "prisoners of war" is reserved for combatants captured in international armed conflicts, it is used by the parties to this conflict. Any party to the conflict is free to treat its captives as prisoners of war and accord them the rights in the Third Geneva Convention of 1949, regarding prisoners of war in international armed conflicts. Neither the government nor the rebels, however, have chosen to do so.

In many noninternational armed conflicts around the world, with the permission of the detaining government and/or the insurgents, the ICRC has come to the aid of persons deprived of their freedom in connection with the conflict - including captured combatants and those suspected of being aligned or involved with them. ICRC delegates conduct strictly humanitarian visits: they observe the material and psychological conditions of detention and the treatment accorded to detainees, provide them with relief supplies if required (medicines, clothing, toilet articles) and ask the authorities to take any steps deemed necessary to improve the detainees' treatment. The results of the visits are provided by the ICRC to the government in confidential reports not intended for publication.

ICRC visits to places of detention are carried out according to specific criteria ICRC: its delegates must be allowed to see all the detainees and talk freelyto them without witnesses, to have access to all premises used for detention and to repeat their visits, and must be provided with a list of the persons to be visited (or be permitted to draw up such a list during the visit). The delegates hold discussions at various levels of the government before and after these visits.79 In 1994 the ICRC visited 99,020 detainees in fifty-five countries,80 most of them in the context of noninternational armed conflicts.

Despite the confidential nature of any ICRC visit, the Sudan government has refused the ICRC humanitarian access to any and all persons detained in connection with the conflict.

The absence, in a war that has lasted over a decade, of any acknowledged captured combatants on the government's side raises the possibility that captured or incapacitated combatants might routinely have been killed as a matter of government policy. The burden is on the government to explain this troubling lack of captured combatants.

DAILY REPORTING AS A FORM OF HARASSMENT

Persons perceived as opponents of the government are frequently ordered to report to one branch or another of the various security agencies on a daily basis in what constitutes a pattern of harassment and intimidation. This is particularly prevalent with the political section branch of the Department of Centralized Security, which is part of Sudan Security. Suspects are served with an official written and stamped order to present themselves the next day to the security offices of political security, in the army headquarters in Khartoum. A daily average of thirty to forty persons are called to that branch alone. They are required to arrive at the start of the working day at eight in the morning, and are sometimes made to wait well into the evening. They frequently are told they have been called for interrogation: weeks or even months of consecutive days of waiting in daily visits may be required before any questioning ensues. The suspects are not allowed to talk to each other or to read.

One advocate told us that he had been called to security on several different occasions. He was summoned to the Sudan Security building in Khartoum North, which is three or four stories high but has no sign on it. When he was called there in January 1995, he was directed by reception to an office (number seven or eight), where he found a table and two or three chairs and a bed. No one was there. After a half hour someone entered, with a mask (ski cap) over his face, who askedhim questions: such as why he went to visit his client on Monday, the nature of his discussions with him, and so forth. The advocate said he could not tell the interrogator what the discussion was about without receiving the client's permission. The interrogator verbally abused the advocate, his family, his political party, and his client, before leaving. After one hour, the advocate was escorted back to the reception area. He was required to return each day for seven days at 8:00 a.m. and stay until the end of the business day, although no one returned to question him. He insisted on receiving a summons for each day because he had to have an excuse for not appearing in court.

In the reception area the same source said he observed hundreds of people waiting and coming and going. They included women, merchants, doctors, school boys; the security building was full of people. Outside security agents came and went in vehicles and on motorcycles.81

These procedures represent a form of undeclared detention outside the supervision of the judiciary. They disrupt the victims' professional and family lives, exert undue pressure on them and constitute a violation of their rights not to be arbitrarily detained.

Security detainees are kept in secret detention places known as "ghost houses" administered by Sudan Security, which also is responsible for investigation of crimes - including by interrogation - and the apprehension of suspects under the National Security Act, and these detentions are not supervised by a judicial authority, in violation of international standards.

Although it appears that torture is not used as routinely as it was in the early years of this government, it has not been abandoned. Torture in "ghost houses" became so notorious that the government dismantled most of the famed "Citibank ghost house" in Khartoum and transferred the sixty Sudan Security detainees held there to a specially-renovated section of Kober Prison in Khartoum. Since then, many Sudan Security detainees have been taken back and forth from Kober to ghost houses or other security facilities, where some were subjected to torture and other ill-treatment during interrogation. The worst reports of torture and ill-treatment, however, continue to come from the war zones and border areas.

THE APPLICABLE LAW

There is no dispute that torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment are forbidden in international law. Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Sudan is a party, provides:

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. In particular, no one shall be subjected without his free consent to medical or scientific experimentation.

Article 10 (1) states "All persons deprived of their liberty shall be treated with humanity and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person."

Deaths resulting from torture or mistreatment in detention also violate the individual's right to life set forth in Article 6 (1) of the ICCPR:

1. Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.

The Convention Against Torture or Other Cruel Inhuman or Degrading Treatment, which Sudan has signed but not ratified, states in Article 2:

2. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

3. An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.

In Article 4, the Convention Against Torture also provides that each state party "shall ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law." Its Article 12 also provides that each state shall ensure

that its competent authorities proceed to a prompt and impartial investigation, wherever there is reasonable ground to believe that an act of torture has been committed in any territory under its jurisdiction. Article 13 requires that each state shall ensure that any person alleging torture has the right to complain to, and to have his case promptly and impartially examined by, its competent authorities. Steps shall be taken to ensure that the complainant and witnesses are protected against all ill-treatment or intimidation as a consequence of his complaint or any evidence given.

Furthermore, that convention is quite explicit about requiring states to provide a legal remedy for torture, in Article 14.1 It requires each State Party to prohibit any statement made as a result of torture being used in evidence in any proceeding, except in a proceeding against the torturer.2

The U.N. Human Rights Committee issued General Comment 7 (1) under the ICCPR, stating

Complaints about ill-treatment must be investigated effectively by competent authorities. Those found guilty must be held responsible, and the alleged victims must themselves have effective remedies at their disposal, including the right to obtain compensation.

When a death in custody occurs, and complaints by relatives or other reliable reports suggest unnatural death, the authorities have the responsibility under international standards to conduct a thorough, prompt and impartial investigation, to determine the cause, manner and time of death, the person responsible, and conduct an autopsy. The scene of the death should be preserved for full forensic investigation and for police and coroners' inquiries.3

The Human Rights Commission has held that a state violated Article 6 (1) of the ICCPR where a detainee died in custody and was given an autopsy by military authorities, but where the state did not submit any information on the circumstances of death or the inquiries it had made into those circumstances. While the commission could not determine if it was a case of suicide or murder, the state authorities violated Article 6 (1) by not protecting the detainee's life and not investigating impartially how his death occurred.4

The U.N. has recommended that places of detention should not be administered by the same division of government that supervises officers with responsibility for the investigation of crime and the apprehension of criminals, whether in the police, security forces or military units. States should ensure that there is effective oversight of the status of detained persons and places of detention,in order to protect the rights of all detainees. The officials responsible for such oversight should have the authority to compel judicial review of a person's detention. Oversight of the application should be done by a judicial or similar authority independent of the police, security forces and other officials responsible for the apprehension of offenders or the investigation of offenses. These authorities should also be responsible for keeping track of the status of all persons in detention to ensure that their cases are being processed appropriately.5

The practice of maintaining unacknowledged, concealed or unofficial places of detention such as "ghost houses" is a violation of international standards; this practice makes it difficult to supervise the treatment detainees receive, and makes it impossible for the detainee to assert his rights. As U.N. criminal justice authorities have found,

Effective supervision of places of detention by impartial authorities interested in maintaining humane treatment is vital for the protection of human rights of detainees. . . . Looking after the well-being of detained persons is an obligation under the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. . . . The location of detainees should also be known at all times so that their treatment may be supervised. This supervision is in addition to the rights of detainees to take judicial proceedings to challenge the basis and conditions of their detention.6

Rule 36 of the U.N. Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners requires that certain measures be taken to facilitate complaints by a detainee to the proper authorities.7 Principle 29 of the U.N. Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons Under Any Form of Detention also requires that

places of detention shall be visited regularly by qualified and experienced persons appointed by, and responsible to, acompetent authority distinct from the authority directly in charge of the administration of the place of detention or imprisonment.8

It is but a short step from unacknowledged detention to torture and disappearance. The U.N. General Assembly has condemned forced disappearance as a constellation of violations of recognized human rights: the right to life, the right to liberty and security of the person, the right not to be subjected to torture and the right to recognition as a person before the law. In order to prevent disappearances, the General Assembly Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances, Article 9,9 requires:

1.The right to a prompt and effective judicial remedy as a means of determining the whereabouts or state of health of persons deprived of their liberty and/or identifying the authority ordering or carrying out the deprivation of liberty is required to prevent enforced disappearances under all circumstances . . . .

2. In such proceedings, competent national authorities shall have access to all places where persons deprived of their liberty are being held and to each part of those places, as well as to any place in which there are grounds to believe that such persons may be found.

3. Any other competent authority entitled under the law of the State or by any international legal instrument to which the State is a party may also have access to such places.

Article 10 of the same declaration on protection from disappearance states:

1. Any person deprived of liberty shall be held in an officially recognized place of detention and, in conformity with national law, be brought before a judicial authority promptly after detention.

2. Accurate information on the detention of such persons and their place or places of detention, including transfers, shall bemade promptly available to their family members, their counsel or to any other persons having a legitimate interest in the information unless a wish to the contrary has been manifested by the persons concerned.

3. An official up-to-date register of all persons deprived of their liberty shall be maintained in every place of detention. Additionally, each State shall take steps to maintain similar centralized registers. The information contained in these registers shall be made available to the persons mentioned in the preceding paragraph, to any judicial or other competent and independent national authority and to any other competent authority entitled under the law of the State concerned or any international legal instrument to which a State concerned is a party, seeking to trace the whereabouts of a detained person.

In other cases, the danger from unacknowledged detentions and secret places of detention is not disappearance but summary execution. Thus, under the U.N. Principles on the Effective Prevention and Investigation of Extra-Legal, Arbitrary and Summary Executions, Principle 2 states:

In order to prevent extra-legal, arbitrary and summary executions, Governments shall ensure strict control, including a clear chain of command over all officials responsible for apprehension, arrest, detention, custody and imprisonment, as well as those officials authorized by law to use force and firearms.

Those same principles also require that governments ensure that "persons deprived of their liberty are held in officially recognized places of custody." Governments also must make accurate information on the detainee's custody and whereabouts, including transfers, promptly available to their relatives and lawyer or other persons of confidence.10

SECURITY DETENTION FACILITIES AND CONDITIONS OF DETENTION

Torture, ill-treatment and death usually occur while the detained are held incommunicado in Sudan Security or military custody, rather than in the prison system. Security members are able to operate with relative impunity for many reasons: there is no judicial or other supervision of their practices or detention centers; authorities such as the Supreme Court and the attorney general's and minister of justice's offices, which should play a role protective of detainees, have shown no inclination to do so, and apparently acquiesce in whatever security wants to do. Nor is a right such as habeas corpus available whereby an advocate for the detainee might press the courts to establish his or her physical condition. They do not allow visits by family or advocates and the detainee is generally kept in incommunicado detention.

The detainees remain under the jurisdiction of security, rather than other executive agencies that have a better record of treatment of prisoners, such as the Ministry of Interior's General Administration of Police of Prisons and Reformation. This administrative arrangement violates international standards recommending that places of detention not be administered by the same division of government that is responsible for investigation of the crime and detention of suspects.

Under these conditions, there is no institutional brake on security. The human rights movement, however, has been credited with improving the treatment of detainees by former detainees themselves. They believe the government, while belittling foreign concern about this issue, is nevertheless sensitive to external criticism of torture and ill-treatment.

Ghost Houses

"Ghost houses" are secret detention centers run by Sudan Security or anyone else with official or semi-official power who wants to hold detainees without warrant or court order. The detention "facilities" may be former homes or offices; at one time the former office of the Sudan Bar Association was even used as a "ghost house." They are used to provide deniability, the first step on the unacknowledged detainee's path to torture, murder and/or disappearance.

Their existence became so well known, however, that by 1994 deniability was weakened. The practice and many locations became known, although security still frequently refused to acknowledge having the detainees in custody. The most notorious of the "ghost houses" was the "Citibank ghost house," so called because it was in a government-owned house behind the high-rise office building where Citibank used to have its Khartoum office; it was also known as the Oasis (AlWaha). Before June 1989, when it was taken over by security, it served as the head office of the Sudan Council of Voluntary Agencies, an NGO umbrella group established by the government.

The "Citibank ghost house" was just one of many "unofficial" detention facilities in Sudan. It acquired a central and legendary place in the secret detention system controlled by security. However, other evident unacknowledged detention locations in 1994-95 were within the head office of security, inside the army headquarters complex in Khartoum, and in the government houses previously used for technical services of Sudan Airways and the National Elections Commission, also near the army complex. A security facility near the Kuwaiti Embassy in Khartoum, the department of special operations of internal security (al amaliyat), also was used. Detainees at this location in May 1995 were subjected to ill-treatment: they were forced to do kneebends for hours while lifting chairs above their heads, and were whipped.11

CITIBANK GHOST HOUSE BEFORE MARCH 1995

Many former detainees have given accounts of their torture inside the Citibank ghost house. Others, not tortured themselves, witnessed the torture of their fellow inmates.12

Security initially renovated the Citibank ghost house, building cells to hold dozens of detainees. Up to 150 detainees are believed to have been held there at one time.

In the courtyard of the house, security built eighteen cells of bricks and cement for the walls, iron sheets for the doors, and corrugated iron for the roofs. The cells were in a U shape, facing north. The cells were numbered from one to eighteen. According to former detainees, cells number one to five (the western arm of the U) each had a maximum capacity of three people. Cells six to sixteen, the center of the U, were individual detention cells. Cells seventeen and eighteen had a holding capacity of fifteen persons each, although detainees were routinely packed in greater numbers. At any given time, some fifty detainees could be found in the cells. Inside the main house, many others were detained in rooms less like cells; they were generally the ones whose interrogation was finished.

All cells in the courtyard had narrow doors of sheet metal with a narrow barred ventilation strip on top. Opposite each door was a square window twenty by twenty centimeters. The corner cells, numbers six and sixteen, had the least ventilation.

Former detainees said that the heat inside the ghost house cells was unbearable; during many months of the year Khartoum temperatures reach above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in the day and are not cool at night. This heat is intensified by metal doors, corrugated iron roofing, lack of ventilation and overcrowding. For each cell there was only a jug of drinking water. They did not allow detainees to change clothes nor to wash (except the ritual washing preceding prayers).

Detainees, usually denied mattresses by the guards, slept on the cement floor of the cells, using their shoes as pillows. They were allowed out of the cells six times a day, for breakfast and for prayers, although the times did not coincide with the five daily prayers. They were not allowed to talk to each other and had to return to their locked cells immediately after prayers. They were only allowed to go to the bathroom during prayer breaks.

Detainees were not allowed to receive any visits or even food packages from their families; usually the families knew only that security was holding them, but not where they were held.

Medical care was minimal, even for those who were injured in torture sessions or who suffered from preexisting ailments. One older detainee, Abdel Rassoul El Nour, an Umma party leader and ex-minister, did not leave his individual cell for two days. Only when other detainees pressured the guards did they open the cell and find him unconscious; the detainees believed he had passed out some time before. He was taken to the health unit of Sudan Security and after several days recovered enough to be released from security in late June 1994. He then required treatment for another three weeks in Mulazmein Hospital.

Interrogation sessions in other security locations provided the only occasions for which detainees were taken outside the ghost house. The detainees were blindfolded and made to stay out of sight in the cars taking them outside the ghost house.

The account of one detainee, held from the end of 1992 until late 1994, illustrates the plight of long-term detainees in ghost houses during that period. This man, whom we shall call Mustafa, was held without charges, trial, family visits,access to a judge or an attorney for almost two years and was moved around among facilities and states as it suited security.13

For more than two weeks, they held him in Citibank, on a closed veranda with others, including several soldiers from the Nuba Mountains. After sixteen days, they put him into an individual cell. Although he was not beaten - he had been tortured during prior detentions - the young guards shouted at and insulted him, trying to provoke him, and made him stand for hours. He said they taunted him with not being a Muslim, with being a leftist. His warning to the young guards, that they should be careful "since when his government was overthrown, the torturers would all be tried," caused a guard who frequently taunted him to remove his mattress, making him sleep on the bare floor, to punish him.

After the first sixteen days of detention they removed him to an individual cell, number sixteen, where he was kept alone. Cell sixteen was very small, only one by two meters, and was in a closed and very hot corner area with ventilation provided only by the small opening above his head.

He was in this cell for the first time for forty days, and for the second time for two months. They did not release him for his prayers or meals at the same time as the other detainees, to increase his isolation. They locked the other detainees up when they let Mustafa out of his individual cell. They let him out sometimes to wash his clothes, the guards telling him he could wash five pieces. He told us he never had time to wash more than one piece, however, and that the guards often took that one clean piece and threw it in the mud.

They did not give him daily medicine he had to take for high blood pressure until, toward the end of his time in detention, he threatened to go on a hunger strike. They finally brought it, but insisted he pay for the medicine.

He said he was questioned for just two days, and asked about his alleged activities in a banned political party and other members' names and activities. During interrogation, they referred to his condition as "preventive detention." When he asked for his rights and to be taken before a judge, they said, "We'll keep you for whatever time we want. Don't even dream of being taken to a judge or asking for your rights. We are the ones who will decide, not a judge. We will decide to try you and we can even execute you. We can keep you whatever time we want to keep you, one year, two years. You won't work again in the [banned] party."

He rarely saw a security officer in the ghost house. Although the guards did not wear names on their uniforms, they rarely covered their faces. He saw only one officer who came to the ghost house to supervise the guards, most of whomwere between nineteen and twenty-four years old. Some guards were educated and most were Islamists, although he characterized some as "more fanatical" than others. They rotated the group of guards.

After the initial period of detention in Citibank ghost house, he and twenty other detainees were taken to Kassala Prison in eastern Sudan, where he stayed for nine months, still under the jurisdiction of security. When they prepared the detainees for transfer from the Citibank ghost house, they were also photographing detainees, and he could see that there were about 150 detainees at the Citibank ghost house at that time. Not all ghost house detainees were "political"; there was always a group of "economic" detainees (who had allegedly violated import/export or foreign currency restrictions) in the Citibank ghost house, and foreigners (accused of many crimes, from spying to financial offenses) also.

In Kassala Prison the prison guards did not mistreat them. In fact, perhaps because their group included five Umma Party members who had held high positions in the past government, the prison director met them and told them that the prison authorities were not aligned with any party, that they treat all the prisoners the same and that they have "the best prison regulations in the world." The political detainees in Kassala did, in fact, have the right to a bed, bedding, a refrigerator for food, and better rations than in security. They were able to receive visits from their families, although families needed a permit from security in Khartoum to do so. In Mustafa's case, the long distances his family had to travel and the difficulty of securing visiting permits meant he had only three visits from his family in the nine months he was held in Kassala. During that period, security released some of the twenty-one detainees who were transferred with him from the ghost house in Khartoum, so that by February 1994 their numbers were down to six.

It was during Mustafa's time in Kassala Prison, in September 1993, that Gaspar Biro, the special rapporteur on Sudan for the U.N. Human Rights Commission on Human Rights, was supposed to visit that prison. The authorities temporarily closed down the security section at that time and obliterated the evidence that these security detainees had been there; all security detainees in Kassala Prison were moved to a security house in Kassala until the authorities were sure Biro had left town.

While Mustafa was in Kassala Prison, he and others wrote twice to President al Bashir, informing him of their detention and asking him to order their immediate release and punishment for those responsible for their detentions. They received no reply. They believed, however, that since human rights groups published their names abroad and people wrote to the Sudan government about them, their treatment was better than it would have been.

In early 1994 security sent Mustafa and the other five remaining security detainees from Kassala Prison back to Kober Prison. Then they were taken back to Citibank ghost house for eighteen days. Security did not interrogate them there but treated them very badly. Upon arrival at the Citibank ghost house, the guards lined the detainees up against a wall and beat them all in turn. At that time, he counted more than sixty detainees in the cells and about sixty in the house itself.

According to his testimony, he observed others being tortured and mistreated while he was in the Citibank ghost house. He saw some being kept in the sun, and others kept standing outside all night. Others were deprived of water and kept from going to the toilet for more than twenty-four hours at a time. They would not let people bathe for a week or ten days, although some were forced to roll in the mud in the courtyard. Many were beaten with hoses and plastic pipes. Others were forced to squat and then forced to hop like a hare. Many were "boxed" or punched. The guards also used a high powered water hose to spray water directly on the body, eyes and ears. The ones who were beaten the worst were young men, about fifteen or sixteen years of age, usually suspected members of banned mass movement organizations.

Mustafa and one other security detainee were taken about a month later to Al Damar Prison, about 200 kilometers north of Khartoum, and were treated according to prison regulations, as in Kassala Prison. They were there for four months and then sent back to Kober Prison. From there, Mustafa was brought back to the Citibank ghost house for the third time, where he stayed for two months until his release.14

Another man detained in June 1993 and not released until May 1995 had a similar story of harsh and arbitrary treatment. He spent three and a half months in the Citibank ghost house, was transferred to Kober Prison for three months, returned to Citibank for two months, and was transferred to Atbara prison. No charges were ever pressed against him.

He was strictly confined inside the Citibank ghost house, kept locked in his individual cell day and night, except when it was opened four or five times a day for ten minutes each time. He had no newspaper, radio, medicine, or medical care, although he had medical problems due to his age and severe torture during his first arrest under this government when "my life was at stake." Because of the cumulative effects of his detentions, he had serious health problems upon release in May 1995.15

"CLOSING" OF CITIBANK GHOST HOUSE IN MARCH 1995

Apparently responding to international criticism, the government quietly dismantled most of the Citibank ghost house in March 1995, without, however, acknowledging its past use. It dismantled the cells specially built in the courtyard - except two cells that continued to be used to lock up detainees - and transferred the estimated sixty detainees there at the time to the newly-created security section of Kober Prison.

After its nominal closure in March 1995, detainees continued to be taken to the Citibank ghost house immediately after detention, kept there for interrogation for as long as the officer in charge wanted, but often no more than two days. Then they were transferred to the security section of Kober Prison. The Citibank ghost house continued to be used for interrogation, however, and some detainees would be taken from the security section of Kober Prison back to the ghost house for interrogation for weeks at a time. Confinement in the Citibank ghost house in its reduced form was also used as a punishment and a means to isolate selected detainees. After the March 1995 remodeling of the facility, some security detainees granted family visits were taken there and then to the head office of security to meet their families.

Kober Prison Security Facilities

To say that the security detainees are "in Kober Prison" is misleading. They are held under conditions of detention different from those of other Kober inmates, be they convicts or detainees awaiting trial. The security detainees are held in a specially-built section in the northwest corner of Kober, totally cut off from other prisoners and from the protection of the prison system for the most part.

Security detainees do not have the protection from torture that prisoners in Kober traditionally have enjoyed while they are on the premises,16 although mostof the ill-treatment they suffer is still administered in "ghost houses" or other security facilities, not in Kober. Visits by families and lawyers are exceptional, and require special permission. Usually those favored with family visits meet their family outside Kober Prison, for example in the head office of security. Nor do the security detainees have the right to see their advocates, unless the advocate secures an order from Sudan Security.17

The security detainees do not have the same rights to visits as other Kober prisoners. For example, the "political prisoners" - a group arbitrarily defined by the government whose composition is unclear but seems to include those convicted by military tribunals for involvement in various coup attempts - are entitled to receive visits on Fridays from any visitor, without pre-clearance. The common criminals sentenced to death receive visits on Thursdays. Homicide detainees awaiting trial see their visitors on Wednesdays.18

When Human Rights Watch visited Kober Prison on May 29, 1995, the prison director said we could not visit the security section of Kober Prison without permission from security. We were allowed to tour the grounds of the main prison, which remains under the jurisdiction of the minister of interior, and to speak privately to convicts, including "political prisoners. "

The security section of Kober Prison, at the time of our visit, reportedly held sixty-four detainees, among them former Prime Minister Sadiq al Mahdi; our specific request to talk to him was denied by the prison authorities. Although the director of Kober Prison told us that he was responsible for the safety, food and health of the security detainees, he said he did not have the authority to permit anyone to visit them or send them packages of food, clothes or medicine. These prisoners are still under investigation; Sudan Security, he said, takes them out of Kober for questioning, and then brings them back.

The security detainees are sent to Kober Prison with an order from the director of security stating that the named detainee is in custody, and requesting the Kober Prison director to keep him in Kober until further orders. The director ofKober told Human Rights Watch that in early May 1995 Sudan Security had ninety prisoners in the security section, the highest number at any one time since 1993 when he became prison director. He compared this with President Gaffar Nimeiri's era (1969-85), when at various times, he said, there were more than 1,000 security prisoners.

These detainees are supposedly better off in Kober than they were in the Citibank ghost house with regard to medical care. There is a resident doctor at Kober who is available to them and their health is the responsibility of the prison director.

Those released from the Kober security section said it has three wards or barracks, each with a place for twenty or more detainees. These detainees are said to be under the "special treatment" regime mandated for (convicted) "political prisoners" and therefore have the right to beds, books, and food and cigarettes from their families - although these items have to be transmitted from the families through security, not through the Kober Prison director, and security has not always respected the detainees' rights. They may wear their own clothes (unlike the common crime convicts in Kober, who wear uniforms) and have their own yard for exercise, but are not permitted to mix with the other prisoners. We observed walls more than two stories high between the security section and the rest of Kober Prison.

The security section, closed off from the rest of the prison, abutted three sections not in use: the "Nimeiri Pavilion" (a wooden scaffold erected for hangings, and a concrete amputation block, built under Nimeiri's regime and preserved unused) and the educational wing, under repair at the time of our May 1995 visit. There was a small locked metal door between this wing and the security section. The security section also abuts a third area where those accused of homicide are held awaiting trial.

In September 1993, there were only five in Kober's security section, which at the time was much smaller; two of the five were long-term detainees, leaders of the Sudan Community Party, Mohamed Babikr and Yusif Hussein. These five were taken back and forth frequently from security offices for interrogation and possibly torture; they were never charged with a crime.

In March 1995 they were joined by the large influx of security detainees from Citibank ghost house. By late May there were sixty-four security detainees in Kober as some were released and new arrests were made.19

Other Places Of Detention

Detention centers in Sudan apart from police stations and Sudan Security facilities appear to have proliferated. The army and military intelligence also have detention facilities throughout the country. The People's Police have detention facilities and police courts. Their judgments are often rendered on the spot and usually involve noncustodial punishments such as flogging.

Human Rights Watch has received reports that the NIF has its own security apparatus; indeed, before they were banned, most political parties were believed to have such divisions.20

Members of the NIF security division (amn al jabha) were believed by some observers to have attacked student demonstrators in Khartoum in September 1995, and were alleged to have carried out the arrests of seventy-four people involved in demonstrations in Atbara that same month. In Atbara, the NIF reportedly already held twenty-four detainees in its own security detention center in Atbara, and shaved the heads of all detainees while taunting them, according to a reliable source.21

Other detention facilities are part of specially-created units that include a court with a judge, police, and attorney general representatives. Places of detention are maintained by the agencies that regulate taxes, electricity, customs, exports, banking, and others. They have the power to arrest, hold in detention, try and sentence the accused.

One example is the unit set up to expeditiously process complaints relating to banking law violations, particularly writing bad checks. The prosecutor general, Dr. Abdel Rahman Ibrahim El Khalifa, referring to the taxes electricity, customs, exports, and banking detention places, claimed that these are the "ghost houses" denounced abroad, but they are not ghost houses at all and anyone could visit them. He granted Human Rights Watch permission to visit the banking law violations center, at the far eastern end of Zubair Pasha Street in Khartoum.22

Human Rights Watch was permitted to look into the detention cells there. They appeared to be clean but one large cell was crowded with six men who had just enough room to put a mat each down on the floor. There were no more than ten detainees.

We spoke to one detainee in English, in front of the guards; he had no complaint about the conditions but complained that "there are too many authorities to talk to." He said he had been detained for six days and had seen the judge once; he had spoken to his advocate and was represented by him in court. He was ill and was taken to a hospital the day before our visit but was not admitted.23 The First District Attorney knew that the medical officer at the hospital had recommended that the detainee be admitted to the hospital, but he said it was not possible because a medical commission composed of three doctors had to authorize the admission of a detainee. When the detainee asked the judge to permit him to go to the hospital (an alternative to convening the three-person committee), the detainee told us, "the judge insulted me."

Human Rights Watch raised this case with the prosecutor general, who insisted that a three-doctor panel had to be convened, but that they had not convened the panel. Sudan was not like the U.S., he said, and calling together the appropriate persons was not so easy.24

If, as the prosecutor general admits, convening three doctors is so difficult, then they should drop that requirement. The requirement appeared to be a convenient pretext for not providing medical treatment even if the detainee is seriously ill.

DEATHS IN DETENTION

Among the 1995 cases of possible deaths under torture was that of Mohamed Al Fatih Abdel Moneim Taifor, who died in suspicious circumstances in July 1995 while in the custody of Sudan Security in Khartoum.25 The department of the security apparatus dealing with the south (amn al janoub) arrested Taifor onApril 20, 1995, in the south, and he was accused of "Impersonation."26 Another detained during the same time later hold Human Rights Watch of Taifor's experience and death in custody, and this account follows.

Taifor said he was arrested because he had differences with an influential NIF member over money from trafficking of official contracts. In a series of incidents, some dealing with money, Taifor was repeatedly insulted by guards in front of other detainees, and was taken frequently to the ghost house for interrogations. He seemed to be particularly shaken by accusations and insults touching on his family honor.

On Friday, July 28, Taifor quarreled with the Sudan Security guard at Kober. Although it was against prison regulations to transfer prisoners after 5:00 p.m., he was removed at about 7:00 p.m. that night to the ghost house.

About twenty detainees at the ghost house on the night of July 28 reportedly heard Taifor's groans and screams throughout a long session of severe beatings. Following the beating ordeal in the ghost house, Taifor was taken to a solitary confinement cell in the same ghost house where other detainees heard him recite the Qur'an for some time. After that there was only silence. A commotion occurred in the morning when security guards opened his cell and found him dead. They quickly moved all other detainees from the ghost house to another place used as a storeroom. They removed the body, already in an advanced stage of decomposition due to the extreme heat, in the early hours of Sunday, July 30, 1995.

Doctors who treated him after a possible suicide attempt (overdose of pills) ten days before his death reportedly warned security guards not to leave him alone. Other Kober security detainees tried to warn the guards who picked him up at Kober on the fatal day of July 28 that his condition was very fragile and that they should not take him to the ghost house. Security did not heed these warnings. The immediate reaction of the authorities was to maintain a total blackout about the death. The guards who originally quarreled with and insulted him on Friday, July 28, and the two other guards who took him to the ghost house that day, continued their duties at the Sudan Security wing of Kober Prison.

According to a reliable source, on the night of September 14, 1994, Abdel Muniem Rahma, a trade unionist, was arrested in Wad Medani. At the time, he was sick and in bed on a quinine drip, an intravenous treatment for malaria. The security agents reportedly pulled the needle out of his arm and took him way.

It appears he was suspected of involvement in the anti-government demonstrations that occurred at the University of Wad Medani two weeks before the detention, and was known as a local leader of the banned Communist Party. The victim's refusal to become a member of a popular committee in Wad Medani dominated by NIF supporters may have been a further element in his detention. The local authorities had jailed him several times before for suspected political activities.

He was taken to Hasa Hiisa Prison not far from Wad Medani. The day after his detention, people who had been to visit relatives who were prisoners in Hasa Hiisa prison came to his family and reported that Abdel Muneim was dead. The family went as a group to the prison and demanded the body. The prison guards turned it over to them.

According to the family, the body had clear signs of beating and torture on the testicles and head. Before burial, the family displayed the body in their home to other family members and friends of the victim, so many residents of Wad Medani saw the condition of the body. There was a demonstration in protest of his death, and reportedly the army was called in to protect government offices and security forces buildings from attacks.27

Sources told Human Rights Watch that the Ministry of justice said Abdel Muneim Rahma was brought to Hasa Hiisa Prison only after he recovered from malaria, arriving there in good health. The government reportedly maintained that the medical report showed he died of a heart attack because of a state of "severe shock."28 Although the government reportedly claimed it had initiated an investigation of the matter, Human Rights Watch received no information when it asked government officials about the case.

In a similar case, Mahamad Saleh Fadul Mahamed Saleen reportedly died in security custody in Port Sudan in August 1994. A post mortem was reportedly held, establishing that he sustained wounds and deep cuts on various parts of his body.29 We asked the government about this case, and for a copy of the post mortem report, but received no reply. A forensic report is apparently required on all deaths in custody, although compliance with the regulation cannot beconfirmed. According to sources, there are only two forensic pathologists in Khartoum for all of Sudan.

We received a report that Khalid Ghariib Alla, a fourth year medical student at Kassala University, was detained by security in Hasa Hiisa near Wad Medani in November 1995, and died under torture, but are as yet unable to verify this. Similarly, it was reported that in late 1995 Ibrahim Mohamad, a resident of Damazien who was a merchant involved in the border trade between Ethiopia and Sudan, was accused by security of being an intelligence agent in the employ of Ethiopia, was tortured, and died. Allegedly his body was put in a sack that was thrown into a reservoir of the Roseires Dam, and was accidentally picked up by a cleaning crane the following morning and seen by many laborers. The police reportedly opened an investigation and an initial medical report said the victim died of head injuries caused by falling on the reservoir. We have not yet been able to confirm this reported death.30

TORTURE AND CRUEL, INHUMAN OR DEGRADING TREATMENT

Southerners continue to receive very harsh treatment in detention. A pensioner from Wau, Bahr El Ghazal, whom we shall call Lual, was detained in Khartoum in January 1995 as a "returnee from the rebellion," and reportedly severely beaten by security.

Lual was held in the department of Sudan Security responsible for all detainees from southern Sudan and southern affairs (al janoub), housed in an ordinary residential building in Khartoum 2 district near Farouq Cemetery. In front of the building there are empty freight containers in which security agents reportedly locked Lual and other detainees. When he was brought to Kober from an unofficial detention center, he still bore physical signs of torture.

Lual told fellow detainees that his was a case of mistaken identity. He repeatedly asked security agents to verify his claim with the department from which he had retired, but this simple check reportedly was not run. At the end of his initial detention period, guards told him that he did not have "papers" and that his official detention was only beginning. They did not release him in the general amnesty of August 1995.31

In another case reported in 1996, David was reportedly tortured by Sudan Security in Kosti in mid-1995. David is a former SPLA boy soldier who was sent for education to Cuba, as described in our 1995 report, Children of Sudan: Slaves,Street Children and Child Soldiers, pp. 69-70. Because of the factional fighting still going on in 1993 when he returned from Cuba to Uganda, he and seven other boys in his group decided to return to Khartoum instead of southern Sudan. The government promised them continuing education in Khartoum, then used their defection in its propaganda war against the rebel movement. These seven Nuer and one Dinka boy soldiers experienced attempts of coerced Islamization, and suffered neglect once they served the propaganda purpose.32

By mid-1995, David wanted to return to southern Sudan. He was told in Khartoum that the travel permit to board a barge at Kosti, the northern Nile river terminal for the trip south, was a formality; he therefore did not obtain any permit. As he boarded the barge in Kosti, military intelligence agents arrested him because he did not have a permit. They interrogated him about his reasons for going south and later handed him over to Sudan Security in Kosti, where he was subjected to further questioning and tortured to admit he was a rebel.

Security agents dropped plastic from burning plastic bags on his naked back and body, among other things. The skin on his back had peeled off and his wounds were still raw where the plastic burned him when he arrived in the Sudan Security section of Kober prison in mid-July, according to someone who saw him there and talked to him. He was not released during the general amnesty of August 1995; the authorities apparently promised he would be released when his wounds healed.33

Several reports of torture by Sudan Security in Juba have been received. On December 4 and 5, 1994, at least six and possibly as many as fourteen civil servants and relief workers were detained in Juba, the largest town in war-torn southern Sudan. At least three of them were tortured, according to relatives and others. Five were civil servants working in the Equatoria state ministries of engineering (town planning), agriculture and housing. They were Louis Gore, town planner; Christopher Gore, former Commissioner of Juba; Tobias Atede, relief coordinator for a Christian-oriented Sudanese NGO; Richard Roman, civil servant; Luke Subek, agriculturalist; and Dr. Venusto, civil servant. Eight other civilservants were believed to have been detained at the same time.34 They spent two months in detention. Those who were taken to military headquarters in Juba were reportedly made to lie on their stomachs while their captors stepped on their backs, and held guns to their heads at the military detention center close to military headquarters known as the White House,35 the place to which hundreds were brought who "disappeared" in 1992.

Those of the same group of detainees who were taken to Sudan Security in Juba were tortured systematically. They were locked in an extremely hot container without ventilation on the grounds of Sudan Security. At times they were hung by the hands from the top of the container, so that their feet did not touch the ground. Two of them were badly beaten, and not allowed to sleep. They were subjected to mock executions to force them to talk. Beatings often took place at night.36

Relatives believe that swift denunciation of the detentions by human rights organizations saved the lives of these men. Since their releases, however, they have been under tight travel restrictions and as of mid-1995 were not allowed even to travel to Khartoum.

An informant said that the arrests were the result of a local dispute between southern civil servants and a group of Muslims over land use. Juba and the land around it have traditionally been inhabited by Bari, Acholi, Mandari, and other southern peoples. Under the British (until 1956), Muslim missionaries were banned from the south; after independence, Sudanese Arab Muslims came to Juba and the south as civil servants and traders. The large Juba garrison includes many northern soldiers and members of the Popular Defense Forces (PDF). Thus the Muslim population of Juba, while still in the minority, has grown.

A group of Muslims had apparently asked the Juba town planner, Louis Gore, to allocate to them a certain site belonging to the Catholic church, in order to build a mosque. Gore said the land was already allocated but that the town could give the Muslim group another plot. The Muslim group replied that they already had permission for the first site from the Juba representative of the ministry of engineering affairs. Gore advised the official in question that the first site had already been allocated, and the official revoked his permission to the Muslim group.

There was another dispute about the land around Juba. Several Islamic nongovernmental organizations wanted land to the north and west of Juba for their own agricultural use. This land

was occupied and used by those native to the area, and under Sudanese law, such land could only be taken from them by the government for governmental purposes. The same town planner was said to have blocked transfer of this tribal land to the Islamic nongovernmental organizations.37

Also in Juba the arrests of the civil servants followed in late 1995 and early 1996. Sudan Security in Juba reportedly tortured young Toposa men to implicate a priest in anti-government activities. (See Chapter VII, Freedom of religion).

Accounts of torture have also come from some of the Umma Party leaders detained without charges following the May 16, 1995 detention of the party's leader Sadiq al Mahdi. Sayed Abdel Gadir Ganat, a physician and retired army brigadier, was reportedly tortured with lit cigarettes in a ghost house in Khartoum. Sayed Ganat, who had already served a two-year prison sentence on charges of participating in a coup attempt, was taken to the ghost house after detention although scores of Umma Party security detainees in Khartoum were taken directly to the Sudan Security section of Kober Prison. When Sayed Ganat was finally transferred to Kober, fellow detainees saw recent marks from cigarette burns on his abdomen, according to a former detainee.

Sadiq al Mahdi himself, a former prime minister, was ill-treated during his 1995 detention; he had been detained before under previous governments and under this government. He said that his imprisonment was "the worst that I have been subjected to. I was kept in solitude in a room exposed to the sun all day. I was prevented from receiving visits or contacting my family."38 He was detained from May 16 to August 26, 1995.

Accounts of torture and ill-treatment in Sudan Security secret detention places are not limited to the south or Khartoum. In Damazien, for instance, Sudan Security detained some thirty-seven people in December 1994 in connection with an election for the municipal council where the detainees had tried to raise issues of economic policy toward local agriculture as well as official corruption. They were giving out leaflets urging a boycott of the 1995 elections, which seemed to be the event that triggered the detentions. There was no court order for their arrests or the searches and seizures conducted in some of their offices. None of them wereever tried although they were held for one month in a private house used as a secret security detention center.

According to one detainee, other detainees were tortured with electric shock during that month. One said he had been blindfolded and his arms tied before he was given electric shocks, which he described as "terrible." He said he had received electric shocks and complained of difficulty concentrating; a fellow detainee observed that this young man either stared continually into space or looked down, and did not speak much, which was not his usual state.

Other forms of torture and mistreatment reportedly inflicted during that month included sleep deprivation, prolonged standing (for up to nine hours at night), and beatings with a stick or fists by two security members. Fellow detainees heard others crying in pain at night, mostly after they had been interrogated.

In this Damazien security detention facility there were several other detainees, including two accused of gun-running from Ethiopia to Khartoum; they had fresh, deep wounds on their heads. One, who was about nineteen, said he was tortured with electric shocks.

Attorneys for the leafleting group tried to file a petition in the Damazien court under the National Security Act. The judge refused to accept the case, saying he had no jurisdiction. The attorneys then asked the chief justice to appoint a judge for the case, but there was no answer and eventually these detainees were released.39

The past pattern of prosecution of security and army personnel for torture and murder is discouraging. There is only one recent case in which the conviction of a soldier, Yousif Ali Yousif - not an officer - for unlawfully killing a civilian has been upheld by the Supreme Court. This was not an abuse in detention, but a shooting at a checkpoint. Two other similar convictions were still pending Supreme Court review. The director of Kober Prison, who had more complete information on security, army and police agents convicted of abusing civilians than did any other government official interviewed, said that two police privates, Adil Abbas and Ismaeil Abdullah, were convicted in May 1995 in the same case for torturing and killing a man, and given the death sentence.1 Also according to the prison director, a soldier, Lance Corp. John Adam Rabeh, was convicted in a civilian court in 1994 of killing a civilian in Khartoum. Three army members were involved in the crime but two escaped from police custody before trial.2 Security agent al Juzuuli Idris Abdulmajid was convicted of killing a student in a school in 1994.

Despite our requests for such information, the government was unable to provide any other examples of prosecution of its agents for killing civilians, despite many documented cases of deaths in detention. Furthermore, we have been unable to establish whether the small number of security and military defendants actively prosecuted for abuses were released in a pardon of thirty-seven military personnel in August 1995; neither the names nor the ranks of those pardoned were published, and the government has not replied to our written requests for more information.

Torture also has been tolerated and torturers guaranteed impunity. Testimony and medical examinations established at trial in the 1994 Explosives Cases, for example, that the defendants had been tortured by security agents. Despite this fact, criminal prosecution was not initiated by the government in this case, although Attorney General Shiddu said that he asked for an investigation. One of the torturers identified in court had been accused of an arbitrary checkpoint killing. He was not suspended from his job then, and he therefore was able to torture the Explosives Case detainees a year after the checkpoint killing.3

Nor has the government lived up to its obligations in the case of Brig. (Ret.) Mohamed Ahmed al Rayah to undertake a prompt and impartial investigation of serious torture allegations under international human rights law.The future of security accountability in Sudan looks even bleaker because the National Security Act as amended now bars all civil and criminal actions against

security members - except for when that the abuse "is not related to the official work of the member." International norms prohibit such impunity.

The cases described below are far from the only cases of abuse at the hands of security or military personnel; other cases are detailed in other chapters of this report. They include the cases of southerners such as "Lual," a group of civil servants detained in Juba in December 1994, a priest and several students from the Toposa tribe detained in Juba in December 1995, Umma Party leaders such as Sayed Abdel Gadir Ganat, groups of persons detained in Damazien and Atbara in 1994, and hundreds of students and others detained in Khartoum in September 1995, among many other cases.

CASES OF IMPUNITY

Torture of Brig. (Ret.) Mohamed Ahmed al Rayah al Faki

One of the best known and documented cases of torture in Sudan in recent years was that of Brig. (Ret.) Mohamed Ahmed al Rayah al Faki. Human Rights Watch/Africa in 1994 reprinted sections of his graphic letter of complaint to the minister of justice and attorney general.4 He alleged he was tortured with electric shock, severe beatings, and rape in 1991 and 1992. A medical certificate from August 1993 detailed physical injuries consistent with the allegations.5 In November 1995, the government admitted to Human Rights Watch that Brig. al Rayah was not released in an August 1995 general pardon extended to others convicted with him because he had complained about being tortured.6 Brig. al Rayah told many people that government representatives visited him in jail and tried to pressure him into withdrawing his case in exchange for his release. Six months later, however, in February 1996, al Rayah finally was released, still not having withdrawn his complaint of torture. While his unconditional release is a step forward, the next step must be a full investigation of his torture.

The government of Sudan is extremely defensive about this case, in part because it involves a high-ranking military man. It refused to permit the UnitedNations special rapporteur on human rights to interview Brig. al Rayah during the

rapporteur's September 1993 visit to Sudan, although the special rapporteur met with the victim in December 1993.

The government first told the special rapporteur that there would be a judicial inquiry into the complaint.7 Judge Aliahia, a provincial judge in Khartoum, was assigned by then Chief Justice Jalal Ali Lufti to conduct the investigation.8 To date this investigation has not been completed and no results have been announced.

In the course of its attack on the 1995 Amnesty International report on Sudan, the government made two assertions regarding the al Rayah case that do not hold up to scrutiny. First, the government asserted that, since the special rapporteur met with Brig. al Rayah in December 1993 and did not mention the meeting in his subsequent report, "the only logical explanation for such omission . . . is that he was convinced that the allegation was not true, otherwise he would have enjoyed reporting the facts to the last minute detail."9

This is not the only logical explanation. Human Rights Watch asked the special rapporteur about this comment. He said that the complaint of Brig. al Rayah appeared in an earlier report and it is not the practice to repeat, report after report, the details of cases that have already been described. He said he was satisfied that the interview bore out the written allegations of Brig. al Rayah.10

The second assertion the government made about the al Rayah case that is not proved was that "there was no report because Mr. al Rayah has requested in writing that the judicial investigation be discontinued."11 Dr. Ahmed Elmufti, thespecial rapporteur for the government's Advisory Council on Human Rights, told Human Rights Watch that he had looked into the torture allegations. He said that the government was in possession of a handwritten letter from al Rayah requesting that the attorney general intervene to stop the investigation of the torture allegations. Human Rights Watch asked for a copy of the letter. It was never produced. We asked if al Rayah was represented by an attorney; government officials said they were not sure.12

Human Rights Watch told Dr. Elmufti that we had met recently with a family member who informed us that al Rayah had not withdrawn the complaint. Dr. Elmufti and Dr. Ibrahim were skeptical, claiming that the family wanted nothing to do with him and had no way of knowing these things.13

The director of Kober Prison, where al Rayah was imprisoned flatly contradicted the assertions of these other government officials that al Rayah had withdrawn the complaint. Al Rayah was still receiving medical treatment in connection with his complaint, he said. He was most certain that the complaint had not been withdrawn, even when presented with the contrary statements made by the prosecutor general.14 A fellow inmate also confirmed that al Rayah was still pursuing his complaint, adding, "He was tortured too much. He suffered too much. He is really sick. He has continual headaches."15

Although we had requested several times in writing to speak to Brig. al Rayah, when we visited Kober Prison we were told that he was not in that day because he had gone to the hospital for his regular medical treatment - in connection with his torture complaint.

Several reliable sources said that the authorities had been trying for some time to persuade Brig. al Rayah to withdraw his complaint, even offering him inexchange certain benefits, such as permission to travel abroad for medical treatment and money. He reportedly refused.

When the government pardoned political prisoners in August 1995, the name of Brig. al Rayah was not among those being released. Other prisoners convicted with him in connection with the same coup attempt were released then. As noted, the government admitted to Human Rights Watch that Brig. al Rayah was not released because he had a complaint pending. Human Rights Watch noted that the complaint could be processed even if he were not in prison and that this was a punishment for exercising his right to be free from torture, as well as a deterrent to others who might have valid torture complaints.

Brig. al Rayah was released in February 1996; his persistence in pursuing his case cost him an extra six months in prison. He announced that he was intent on pursuing his complaint. We await the government's thorough investigation into this serious matter.

Abd al Hafiz Ahmed al Bashir

Abd al Hafiz Ahmed al Bashir, a member of Sudan Security, was first accused of unlawfully killing Abu Bakr Mohy al Din Rasikh, an engineer, at a checkpoint in October 1992; he was not dismissed nor suspended from the force. His case is a stark illustration of what may happen when a brutal officer is not suspended. After this murder, he remained on active duty and took part in the ghost house interrogation and torture of several of the accused in the Explosives Case in 1993; the torture victims identified him during their trial in 1994. He was then convicted at his own trial for the checkpoint killing. His death sentence was being reviewed in June 1995 by the Supreme Court under highly irregular circumstances.

Apparently the killing of Engineer Rasikh took place in front of many people in the Haj Yussef neighborhood of Khartoum North. We were told by the prosecutor general that in this case the security member turned himself in to a police station shortly after the killing and told his story, claiming self defense. This security member's immunity from prosecution was lifted,16 a result impossible today under the 1995 National Security Act unless it was evident that the killing was not related to the official work of the agent.

We mentioned this case in a 1994 Human Rights Watch report as an example of one of the very few cases where there had been an investigation and prosecution of a security member.17 On appeal however, the case lost its force as an example in the fight against impunity. Under Sudanese law, intentionalhomicide is punishable by retaliation or retribution (qisas, which means the taking of a life in cases of deliberate homicide) or by payment of blood money (dia) to the victim's relatives.18 We were told by lawyers familiar with the case that compensation was set in the amount of Ls. 250,000 (U.S. $473).

The appellate court found that negligent homicide had been committed, rather than intentional homicide.19 It reduced the sentence to two years; in negligent homicide the maximum penalty is three years. The accused was never in custody.20

The case of the killing of Engineer Rasikh was on appeal to the Supreme Court in June 1995. One of the grounds for appeal was that there was a conflict of interest in the case. The defendant was represented on appeal by a legal advisor for Sudan Security (a staff attorney with the attorney general's office) at the same time that the prosecutor from the attorney general's office represented the state, according to those familiar with the case. He was also represented by the private advocate who represented him at trial.21

In the Explosives Case this same security officer was identified by the defendants as one of the security agents who tortured them. This identification was possible because the defendants saw the torturers when they were in the ghost house, and the same security agents appeared at the trial to provide evidence against the defendants.22

The three-judge court in the Explosives Case found that the defendants or some of them had been tortured but nevertheless admitted their confessions in evidence on the grounds that the torture did not influence their confessions. Thecourt took no further action with regard to this serious finding of torture. The minister of justice and attorney general, however, told Human Rights Watch that he asked Sudan Security to investigate this case even though the victims did not come to him with information;23 the trial court record had the sworn statements of the victims, however. The status of the attorney general's request to Sudan Security is not known.

Human Rights Watch will continue to monitor the progress of the investigation into the torture of the Explosives Case defendants. Since the April 1994 trial in the Explosives Case, however, the National Security Act has been amended to prohibit criminal and civil proceedings against security members. Not only is it doubtful that Maj. Abd al Hafiz Ahmed al Bashir will ever be punished for murder in the Rasikh case, it is also likely that he and the others named in the Explosives Case will evade punishment for the documented use of torture in that case. He reportedly is still on active duty as a security officer.

Abdul Wahab al Beshir

Abdul Wahab, a lance corporal in the army, was convicted on April 17, 1994 by a one judge civilian court for the killing of a man he shot fleeing a checkpoint.24 This killing, as related by the defendant himself, was a violation of international standards regarding the use of firearms.25 Although he received a sentence at trial of death by hanging for culpable homicide, by virtue of an unprecedented maneuver in the Supreme Court he may not be punished at all for the crime.

Human Rights Watch was allowed to interview Abdul Wahab in Kober Prison where he was confined. He consented to the interview (translated by anofficial of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs). He admitted that he killed a man. He was acting as a soldier, he said. "The bullet shot the man." He did not intend to kill him. The shooting took place at 12:30 a.m. on December 29, 1992, after curfew. Although he initially said he did not know the victim's name, when pressed he recalled that it was Abdullah Khidir. He said the car, with two passengers, did not stop at the checkpoint. It stopped after the checkpoint and the two inside ran out and into a building.26 Abdel Wahab shot one man in the back to prevent escape. He took the man to the hospital, but he died.

Abdel Wahab said that after the incident he spent two years on duty. He was not jailed until the time of the trial in April 1994. He was then detained in the military section of a military unit for about one year, and during that time did not work as a soldier.

At trial he was represented by "an attorney from the ministry of justice, an advocate with the title of brigadier." In our conversation Abdel Wahab said that he had killed a man and deserved to die, to receive the punishment of death as required by shari'a law. His case was on appeal to the Supreme Court.27 At the time, however, it was likely that his death sentence would be quashed by the Supreme Court.

A panel of Supreme Court judges received this case on appeal in early 1995. The three judges disagreed on the verdict; two were in favor of confirming the death penalty and the third, said to be a National Islamist Front sympathizer, was opposed.28 Under Sudanese law, only a majority is required to affirm a death sentence. The Supreme Court panel does not have the option of setting a lesser penalty. Its role in this limited appeal is solely to affirm or strike the death sentence. If the death sentence is not affirmed, the case is remanded for further proceedings.

In an extraordinary move, the chief justice of the Supreme Court removed the case from this panel before the final decree was signed, and assigned it to another panel. When asked why he did this, he admitted that this was not a common practice. He said that he dissolved the first panel because "they did not want to sit down and listen to each other and deliberate." The deputy chief justice added that this was the first time a panel had refused to deliberate. Denying that the fact the defendant was an army soldier was relevant, the chief justice said a deathpenalty case was a serious matter that the judges should discuss. It was a matter of "court discipline."29

We agree that the death penalty is a serious matter, and indeed we oppose its application in any case. There is some question as to whether or not the judges deliberated according to formula, as it was presented to us. We were told by a well-placed source that the chief justice tried to persuade the two judges in the majority in the first panel to change their votes, and they refused, suggesting that it was the result and not the methodology that was at issue in this particular case. The real issue is with the precedent set when the Supreme Court's procedures and deliberations are subject to arbitrary interference on political grounds.

Faisal Hassan Omar

Faisal Hassan Omar was a National Islamic Front member who killed a student at the University of Khartoum in 1989. He was convicted of murder but on appeal the conviction was quashed - on the grounds that the killing of the student was found by the court to be an act of jihad or Holy War.30

The Supreme Court set aside that extraordinary appellate decision unanimously and reinstated the trial court verdict of guilty, in an opinion by Justice Ahmed Jaafar Hamid (later dismissed with no reason given).

The case was remanded by the Supreme Court to the trial court for the question of dia (compensation) for the relatives. The relatives refused dia and insisted on the death penalty, as is their right under Sudanese law. The verdict went back to the Supreme Court for confirmation. It was sent not to the panel that originally heard the case, as was the practice, but to another panel, which quashed the conviction and set the accused free in 1992. This second panel apparently was composed of Supreme Court Justices Hashim Abdul Gasim (now retired), Sadiq Abdullah (now retired) and Hussein Awad Abul Gasim.

Faisal Hassan Omar later was said to have volunteered for battle in the south and to have been killed there, as a "martyr." It was not possible to verify this information, however.

The jihad defense to intentional murder of a civilian gives great cause for concern. Killing a combatant during armed conflict is not considered homicide when it occurs in international conflicts where combatants are protected from prosecution for acts that do not violate international humanitarian law by the"combatants' privilege."31 In internal armed conflicts, such as the one in Sudan, there is no combatants privilege but a government soldier may lawfully, under domestic and international law, kill an armed rebel combatant under a range of circumstances. In neither international nor internal armed conflicts, however, may any combatant deliberately kill a civilian.

In this case, the killing of a civilian is unlawful for many reasons: the victim was not a combatant or otherwise presenting a real and immediate threat to life or security of the attacker or others; the attacker was not a member of the armed forces; and there was no armed conflict occurring in Khartoum, nor has the civil war ever reached the capital.

Permitting killing of unarmed civilians pursuant to notions of a "holy war" is a serious deviation from international law. The opening it provides for self-appointed vigilantes to commit crimes with impunity is a threat to the stability of any society.

Relief Agency Employees and Others: Juba, 1992

The SPLA made two surprise military incursions into the garrison town of Juba in Eastern Equatoria in June and July, 1992. Juba is the largest town in the south. In reaction to these incursions, Sudan Security and military intelligence took very heavy-handed measures that included extrajudicial executions and disappearances.32 Hundreds of persons disappeared and are presumed dead; Amnesty International documented 230 men who were arrested by the government in Juba between June and August 1992 but were never accounted for.33 The government, responding to international pressure, appointed a judge to investigate the allegations, but that investigation was never finished.

Four of the victims were employees of the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID),34 two were employees of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP),35 and another was an employee of the European Economic Community (now European Union).36 The U.S. government requested the Sudan government to provide information on the U.S. employees after they went missing. The Sudan government eventually claimed that one was executed as a spy after a trial before a military tribunal; it later orally admitted that a second was also executed. The others were never accounted for, but the Sudan government promised a judicial inquiry into the "incidents" in Juba of mid-1992.

President al Bashir appointed a committee of five headed by Judge Abu Sin to investigate the case, but no report was ever issued. We inquired about the status of the investigation. The minister of justice and attorney general, Dr. Abd el Aziz Shiddu, while admitting in 1995 that the investigation commenced in 1992 had been "delayed," was defensive. He wanted to know why, with so many executions in the war, the U.S. was making such an issue of four employees, one of whom had been convicted of being a spy37 - although no record of any trial or hearing in his case was ever produced.

The Minister of Justice told Human Rights Watch that there had been a delay in the preparation of the Juba report because the judge in charge was transferred from the Supreme Court to a court in Gedaref (420 kilometers from Khartoum) in 1994, and did not finish the report. "The judge said that every time he was about to conclude the report, he received many telexes with new names [of disappeared] on it."38 Human Rights Watch asked to interview the judge, but no response was received.

The U.N., the E.U., and the U.S. government continued to be dissatisfied with the unfulfilled promise of investigation. In 1995, the Sudan governmentpublicly proposed the name of Fateh Erwa as ambassador to the U.S.39 It is not disputed that Fateh Erwa, in his capacity as security advisor to the president with status of state minister, was present in Juba during the events in question in 1992, as was Ibrahim Shamsa al Din, a lieutenant colonel in the army and member of the governing Revolutionary Command Council. The two were the top-ranking government officials on the scene.

Human Rights Watch received a hearsay account of killings during the first days of the June 1992 SPLA incursion into Juba in which both officers were implicated. A well-placed source alleged that one person summarily executed was an army major of Bor Dinka origin, John Amour. According to this account, Maj. Amour was recalled by radio from the front because he was suspected of being an SPLA collaborator. After an exchange of words during which a fellow officer spoke up for him, Amour was told to go to the detention unit. He was shot dead one hundred meters from the First Division Army headquarters in Juba as he was walking to the detention unit (a building originally used for armored units). Supposedly Fateh Erwa and Ibrahim Shamsa al Din were standing right in back of him and gave the signal to another officer who shot Amour. This reportedly was witnessed by several soldiers. We were not able to verify this account.

The U.S. government delayed several weeks and ultimately did not accept Erwa as ambassador. No reasons were given but apparently one factor was the admitted presence of Fateh Erwa as the highest-ranking security officer in Juba during the incidents in 1992. In this case, there was an unexpected price to pay for impunity and failure to complete a promised investigation.

CASES IN WHICH CONVICTIONS HAVE BEEN UPHELD OR ARE BEING REVIEWED

Yousif Ali Yousif

Security agent Yousif Ali Yousif was convicted by a court in Sennar and given the death penalty for the murder of Hassan Haj Billel, a merchant shot dead in 1993 at a checkpoint, apparently because he resisted confiscation of goods Yousif believed were suspicious. The Supreme Court confirmed the death penaltyand remanded the case to the Sennar court to permit the heirs of the victim to decide if they wanted to forgive him.40 The heirs declined to forgive him, and the soldier was executed on or about June 18, 1995.41 The government has mentioned this case to the U.N. as an example of government punishment of a soldier accused of a killing in detention.42

Al Juzuuli Idris Abdulmajid

Al Juzuuli Idris Abdulmajid is a security agent who shot dead a seventeen-year-old secondary school student, Ahmed Hassan Saad, on March 19, 1994. The shooting took place inside Ali al Said School in Sahafa, Khartoum. Many students witnessed it because it occurred during the day, when school was in session.

According to a relative of the victim, security members came regularly to the school, where the student union was controlled by the National Islamic Front. The victim was an elected member of the Student Union although he was not a member of any party or movement.

The killing occurred during a cultural week held at the school. The victim was in charge of some of the activities. He and the head of the student union (a NIF member or sympathizer) disagreed over whether there should be one day for male students and a separate day for female students, Ahmed taking the position that the activities should be open to all students at all times.

Apparently the student union called in security agents from outside the school to speak to Ahmed about this. The security members asked him to step into a room to discuss the problem; in the past students had been beaten by security in this room. Ahmed refused to go and one security man went inside the room and came out with a pistol with which he threatened Ahmed, who continued to refuse. He was shot there and then in the stomach, was taken to the hospital, and died after one day. The bullet produced injuries to the spine as well as to the stomach.

After his death, his father, who had been minister of agriculture under Nimeiri, made great efforts to see that the killer was brought to justice. He managed, after three months, to convince security to send the case to the attorney general for prosecution. The case was then forwarded to the police and an investigation was commenced. The father hired three attorneys to follow theinvestigation. The accused was held in a building belonging to security for one year.

The police investigation took only one week since there were many witnesses. There was a trial and the defendant was convicted in March 1995, receiving the death sentence. Since his conviction, al Juzuuli Idris Abdulmajid has been in Kober Prison.

Those close to the case said that the family was pressured by several different persons, including some government ministers, to drop the case; they were told that the defendant worked in the headquarters of security and had the backing of important people. Since the death penalty was given, the case is being mandatorily reviewed by the Supreme Court.43 If this is a case that escapes impunity, it may be due in no small part to the social position and persistence of the victim's family.

Sudan, unlike many newly independent African countries, had a functioning judicial system with trained advocates and judges at the time of its independence in 1956, and they proved capable of defending fundamental rights using Sudanese law. The rule of law has been weakened, however, by the lack of a written constitution, three military governments suspended basic rights and ruled by decree, and the transition, accelerated since the 1989 coup, of the legal system from one based on colonial law inherited from the British to one based on Islamic law, shari'a. Most of the abuses of due process and fair trial that Human Rights Watch noted, however, were unrelated to shari'a. They are instead abuses common to de facto governments wishing to stay in power and ruling by decree in prolonged states of emergency.

Immediately after the June 1989 military coup, the government purged ("sent into retirement for the public interest") fifty-seven judges.1 Others were dismissed after that. Some who have served in the judicial system for many years observed that the criteria for selecting judges under the current government seemed more heavily weighted to the candidates' legal and political commitment to shari'a than was the past practice, where academic standing and, for the Supreme Court, extensive judicial experience were, they said, more valued.2 When the number of states was increased from nine to twenty-six, additional judges were appointed to fill the new positions in the states (although more than a few judges are seconded to serve in the Gulf).

The government announced in September 1995 the creation of a committee to review the cases of all those who were purged.3 Whether any judges dismissed in 1989 will be reinstated is unknown.

Abuses of due process surveyed in this chapter include denial of counsel and the right of appeal in trials before military tribunals. Military tribunals have been responsible for the execution after summary trial of many persons, civilianand military, although it is impossible to know how many because the military proceedings are not made public. The summary trial and execution of twenty-eight army officers in 1990 (for an attempted coup) still stands out as an abuse without remedy as do the executions in Juba in mid-1992.

The death penalty is still in use, and executions continue even in civilian courts.

Finally, southern advocates, judges, and others in the judicial system remain concerned that the south is being marginalized and its people reduced to second-class citizenship, by the way in which the law is administered as well as by shari'a as the law of the land - five Islamic penalties not yet enforced in the south. Customary laws, recognized in family matters (marriage, divorce, custody, inheritance),are not taught in law school curricula, and no customary law except Dinka has been codified.

THE APPLICABLE LAW

The right to due process and a fair trial is set forth in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 14.

1. . . . In the determination of any criminal charge against him, or of his rights and obligations in a suit at law, everyone shall be entitled to a fair and public hearing by a competent, independent and impartial tribunal established by law.

2. Everyone charged with a criminal offense shall have the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law.

3. In the determination of any criminal charge against him, everyone shall be entitled to the following minimum guarantees, in full equality:

(a) To be informed promptly and in detail in a language which he understands of the nature and cause of the charge against him;

(b) To have adequate time and facilities for the preparation of his defense and to communicate with counsel of his own choosing;

(c) To be tried without undue delay;

(d) To be tried in his presence, and to defend himself in person or through legal assistance of his own choosing. . . .

(e) To examine, or have examined, the witnesses against him and to obtain the attendance and examination of witnesses on his behalf under the same conditions as witnesses against him; . . .

(g) Not to be compelled to testify against himself or to confess guilt. . . .

5. Everyone convicted of a crime shall have the right to his conviction and sentence being reviewed by a higher tribunal according to law.

The African Charter also protects due process.4

Sudan also is bound by Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, protecting the right to life and regulating the use of the death penalty:

1. Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.

2. In countries which have not abolished the death penalty, sentence of death may be imposed only for the most serious crimes in accordance with the law in force at the time of the commission of the crime and not contrary to the provisions of the present Covenant and to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This penalty can only be carried out pursuant to a final judgement rendered by a competent court.

The United Nations Economic and Social Council has also promulgated certain safeguards guaranteeing protection of the rights of those facing the death penalty. Among other things, it requires that anyone sentenced to death "shall have the right to appeal to a court of higher jurisdiction, and steps should be taken to ensure that such appeals shall become mandatory."5

Where summary executions have been alleged, it is the duty of the government to investigate6 and to prosecute.7

The right to due process before being deprived of a home pursuant to a criminal punishment is protected in Article 14 of the ICCPR. Furthermore, confiscation of property as a punishment for exercising other protected rights, such as free speech or freedom of association, is a violation of those protected rights.

FAIR TRIAL

Military Tribunals

Summary Execution of Twenty-Eight Officers Tried by Military Tribunal in 1990

The tribunal where offenses against due process and fair trial are most egregious is the military tribunal. Unknown numbers of members of the armed forces and civilians - perhaps in the hundreds - have been summarily convicted of treason or other charges for involvement in coup plots in secret trials by ad hoc military courts without counsel, appeal, or other fundamental elements of due process. Many have been summarily executed, often on the same day as the conviction.

An abortive coup d'etat on the night of Sunday-Monday April 22-23, 1990 was followed by the arrests of dozens of officers and soldiers suspected of participating in the coup. Three officers were arrested two or three days before the alleged coup. Twenty-eight officers were summarily tried and promptly executed.8 The government refuses to disclose information about the trials or to turn over the bodies to the relatives.

A military tribunal was believed to have been hastily constituted from four or five officers in government circles of high military rank on Tuesday, April 24, 1990. According to the information that reached the families later, the names of the accused officers were called out in groups of five and each group of five was brought before the tribunal and briefly questioned. All plead not guilty. The verdicts were handed down immediately and the twenty-eight were sentenced to execution.9 Each group of five was chained together and then the condemned men were taken out by group and executed, allegedly by members of the NIF security, in front of a freshly-dug pit. The trials lasted only minutes. No defense counsel was permitted.10

Regardless of the charges against them, these officers had a right to a fair hearing. The haste of the courts martial and firing squad is ample evidence that there was no fair hearing and no right to appeal. Due process was utterly lacking.

This case is rather exceptional for several reasons and still remains open since the government, aside from an announcement read on television by President Bashir naming those twenty-eight officers who had been executed for a coup attempt, never notified the families formally or in writing of their deaths. Some family members formed a committee called the Ramadan Martyrs' Family Organization which is demanding that the details of the trials be made public along with the names of those who presided over the trials and the names of the executioners.

The government has not, to this day, turned the bodies of the officers over to their families for a proper burial. The place where they were buried is kept secret. The families continue to demand the remains so they can be decently buried.11

Other Military Tribunal Cases

In another summary proceeding in connection with a 1991 coup attempt, one officer convicted by a military tribunal told us that his trial lasted about sixty seconds. The court's questions were "Name, rank, please go, we will see you again." He was never called back. He was "tried" with three other officers whom he said he did not know: a colonel, a major, and a lieutenant colonel. Forty-six persons were tried at the same time, with three courts martial proceeding simultaneously in the same place. None of the accused had a representative, friend or advocate to speak for them. The ten civilians among the forty-six were tried by courts martial also.12

According to the officer interviewed by Human Rights Watch, a colonel told him - two months after he was asked to state his name to the court - that he would be executed by a firing squad. His sentence later was decreased from deathto twenty years imprisonment, and then to ten years.13 He and most other convicted 1991 coup plotters were released from prison in August 1995.

Summary proceedings in military courts have been used under other Sudanese governments as well. Four Nuba rank and file army soldiers, El Nour Armin Degash, Osman Mahmud, Abdel Hadi Makki and Abdul Rachman Khalifa, among others, were detained in 1985 and convicted in 1986 in Khartoum by a military court of a "racist conspiracy" to overthrow the government by force.14

In 1992, while already serving sentences for (racist) conspiracy and after the NIF came to power, these Nuba prisoners were further accused of conspiracy and tried before another military court, convened inside Sudan Security headquarters in Khartoum. They were convicted and given life sentences. They had no attorney and no right to appeal aside from the right to go to the minister of defense for a confirmation or rejection of the verdict.15 These four men were released from prison in August 1995.

In reaction to the SPLA's two armed incursions into the garrison town of Juba in Eastern Equatoria in June and July, 1992, security and military intelligence conducted sweeps of neighborhoods and made mass arrests of southerners in the military and the population of Juba, culminating in several hundred extrajudicial executions and disappearances. Some were alleged to have been tried by military tribunal and executed as spies, but although requested by various governments, records of those trials were never provided, if indeed there were any records or there was any trial.16

Only a handful of those convicted by a military tribunal on accusations of involvement in the mid-1992 SPLA attacks on Juba were transferred to Kober Prison. Among those were two southern game wardens, Gadi Jerry Angelo and Nixon Lemi Jobson. Their trial before a military tribunal in Juba reportedly was held the same night as their arrest, and they had no advocate and no right to appeal. They were sentenced to ten years although the charges against them were not clearto them. They wrote an appeal to the military court but have received no response.17 Because of the limited and expensive nature of travel to and from Juba - even Juba residents need security permission to come and go, and space on the flights in and out of the garrison town is limited - they have received no family visits since they have been in Kober.18

Civilian Court: The Explosives Case

The Explosives Case was a landmark case under the current government.19 The defendants were arrested in 1993, tortured, and confessions secured. There were about twenty-five defendants, some tried in absentia. Apparently the government believed it had a watertight case with physical evidence that explosives were possessed pursuant to a conspiracy, concocted with agents of Egypt, Israel, and the U.S., to overthrow the government. A special court formed by Chief Justice Jalal Ali Lufti consisted of three young judges said to be sympathetic to the National Islamic Front.20

The trial, held in March and April 1994, unexpectedly attracted prominent and experienced members of the bar - some twenty-five in number - who stepped forward to defend the accused. Among the leaders of this defense team were Ali Mahmud Hassanein and Mustafa Abdel Gadir, outspoken advocates who had been arrested several times by several governments during their long careers.

The defense advocates fought hard for their clients from the very beginning of their involvement in the case. They walked out of court when they were not allowed access to their clients with enough time to prepare the defense in this complicated case, for which the government had months to prepare. They argued that the confessions obtained were inadmissable since they had been produced as a result of torture.

These advocates succeeded in having the court hear the testimony of the defendants about their torture, order a medical examination of the defendants, and call witnesses they requested, who could corroborate the testimony of torture - including one witness, Farouk Zakaria, who was in a ghost house when he was summoned to court. Indeed, he gave the ghost house as his place of residence. When Sudan Security denied in writing that a second torture witness, Salah HassanSamaret, was in its custody, an advocate elicited from Zakaria that he had seen Samaret in the ghost house that morning. The advocates asked the court, in writing, to take note of Sudan Security's lie about having the witness in custody.

The defendants, under oath, named the names of the Sudan Security agents who tortured them. This proceeding was the first time that torture by security was exposed in court under the current government.

The court, composed of younger judges, apparently ceased to resist the force of the defense arguments midway through the trial, and permitted the advocates to do and say what they wanted on behalf of the accused. This permitted much greater observance of the defendant's due process rights, and was a positive step forward.

Ultimately, however, the court admitted the confessions taken from the tortured defendants as evidence, on the grounds that the torture did not affect the will of the accused. This was the first time in which confessions obtained from tortured defendants were ruled admissible in Sudan, we are told; in any case, this is a major step backward. In August 1995 the president issued a decree pardoning eighteen "political prisoners," including those convicted in the explosives case of 1994.21

Security summoned Ali Mahmud Hassanein, the lead defense counsel, to their offices on several consecutive days while the defense was preparing the oral argument and final submission to the court. They asked no questions but claimed that he was a criminal himself, and asserted that they would never let "those criminals," the Explosives Case defendants, out of jail, according to someone who heard the exchange. Some thirty security agents attended each session of the trial.

Hassanein was summoned to security again on the day of his final oral summation. He decided to ignore the summons and, in court, showed the summons to those present. The judge ruled that he did not have to go to the security offices that day and permitted him to stay in court.

Security still was not through with the defense advocates, and sought to intimidate Hassanein, who was arrested and held for four days at the Sudan Security headquarters in the army base in Khartoum in May 1994, after the end of the trial. Security personnel hit him, angrily referring to his in-court criticism of them. "You said this in summation, you attacked us." A young security member beat him severely on the head.

The news of the detention and beatings spread. Pressure built and Hassanein was released. This was not the end of it, however. He was rearrested in the fall of 1994 and then, too, security kept mentioning the Explosives Case duringhis interrogation. This time fellow Explosives Case advocate Mustafa Abdul Gadir and he were held in the Special Operations Section (al amaliyat) near the Kuwaiti Embassy, to the south of Sudan Security headquarters. They were made to face the wall for six hours. Hassanein was interrogated from 9:00 a.m. until about 4:00 a.m.; Abdel Gadir was beaten on the head and interrogated. They were made to stay on a veranda at night and ordered not to sleep. It was very cold and no blankets or beds were provided. The next day they were ordered to go home and return the same day. When they returned there were more references to the Explosives Case, or rather the statements the advocates made about security during the case: "You said this about us, you are against the NIF." The two advocates were released after four days of coming and going.

In December 1994, the two advocates were again harassed by security. Fifteen security members thoroughly searched the home and office of Hassanein. Abdel Gadir's house was searched at 4:45 a.m., without a search warrant. The next day his office was searched and documents removed without any receipt or identification of what was taken. Both Abdel Gadir and Hassanein were taken to a ghost house for interrogation, which began after midnight. They were permitted to go home after more than twenty-four hours in custody during which they were not allowed to sleep, were forced to do exercises and threatened; Abdel Gadir was beaten with fists and struck with a wooden rod. In September 1995, Abdel Gadir and other lawyers were again arrested by security during the Khartoum student demonstrations and released after a few days, after various human rights organizations issued special alerts on their behalf.

The animus toward the defense advocates carried over to the next notorious trial, of those accused of the February 1994 killing of sixteen persons in a Omdurman mosque of the Ansar al Sunna sect, a conservative sect religiously aligned with the Wahabi sect in Saudi Arabia and critical of the National Islamic Front. This case was tried in a civilian court. Under Sudanese law, the relatives of the victim in a criminal case may retain an advocate to represent their interest in a criminal matter, to work with the prosecution. Under shari'a, the heirs of the victim may pardon the accused, in which case the court must set him or her free; the heirs, not the state, have the paramount interest in a murder case. But the heir's advocate, unlike an advocate for the defendant, must have the permission of the attorney general to become involved in the case.

Some relatives of the Ansar al Sunna victims asked Hassanein to represent them. The attorney general's office adamantly refused to permit this. The prosecutor general told another advocate that they refused because Hassanein would make this into a political case and try to "take over" the prosecution. The case already had political overtones: the chief defendant, Mohamed Abdel Rahmalal Khuleifi, was a Yemeni raised in Libya who fought with the mujahedeen in Afghanistan. He had no visible means of support in Sudan but was said to be supported by Ussama Ben Lauden, a former Saudi citizen who is an opponent of the Saudi government and a NIF supporter. In the hands of a skilled advocate, the witnesses could have been cross-examined about the relationship between the anti-Saudi Ben Lauden group, the NIF government, and the animosity toward Ansar al Sunna leaders, who had received funding for proselytization from Saudi Arabia.

DEATH PENALTY

Death Sentences in Civilian Courts

Sudan has not abolished the death penalty and executions continue pursuant to Sudanese law after trial in civilian courts.22 Under the 1991 Criminal Act, the death penalty may be given in cases of undermining the constitutional system (Article 50), waging war against the state (Article 51), espionage (Article 53), the offenses of homicide (Article 130), homosexuality (third-time offenders, Article 148), rape (in the case of adultery or homosexuality, Article 149), incest (in the case of rape, adultery or homosexuality combined with incest, Article 150), and running a house of prostitution (third-time offender, Article 155).

Islamic law recognizes six major offenses, each of which has a penalty prescribed in fixed terms in the Qur'an or the Sunna (the traditions of the ProphetMohamed).23 These major offenses are known as the offenses of hudud.24 In the penal context, hudud (plural of hadd) offenses receive a punishment with three main aspects. The first is that the punishment is prescribed in the public interest. It cannot be lightened nor made heavier. It may not be pardoned after being reported to the judge, either by him, the political authority, or the victim.25 The hudud crimes of apostasy (riddah, Article 126), adultery (zina, Article 146),26 and armed robbery (hiraba, Article 168)27 may carry the death penalty.

Although the government vigorously defends its right to use the death penalty, apparently the death penalty in civilian courts is neither frequent nor well-publicized since Nimeiri was deposed in 1985.

The director of Kober Prison told us that there were nine executions in Kober in the twenty-one months he had been the director.28 At least one other execution occurred in 1995 in Sennar. These were executions pursuant to sentences by civilian courts. Human Rights Watch did not receive a reply to its inquiry to the government for the total numbers of executions.

International standards require a right to appeal in the case of a death sentence. Sudanese civilian law provides for an automatic review of death sentences by the Supreme Court, we were told. The case will go directly from the trial court to the Supreme Court for review of this penalty. If there is an appeal on other grounds, the case will go first to the appellate court and then to the Supreme Court for review of the death penalty, unless the decision has been reversed by the appellate court.

According to Attorney General Shiddu, there are a number of safeguards to the death penalty, making it less likely that a person receiving a death sentencewill actually be executed. He said that there were grounds in shari'a law for holding that a long wait between the death sentence and its execution is cruel treatment and therefore the death sentence should not be carried out after a certain period of time has passed. He said he made a recommendation not to carry out a death sentence on these grounds in one case, but unfortunately it was too late and the man was executed.29

The attorney general told us during our May 1995 visit that only one person had been executed recently: Mohamed Abdel Rahman Al Khuleifi, the Yemeni convicted for the February 1994 killing of sixteen people at the Ansar al Sunna mosque referred to above. He and others were alleged to have entered the mosque and opened fire. He was tried with an accomplice; two Sudanese who directly participated in the attack were killed the following day in a confrontation with security forces. (See Chapter 7, Religion.) He was convicted and was the only one executed.30 The date of his execution in Kober Prison was September 19, 1994.31

The prosecutor general explained that in cases considered of particular urgency, as the case of the killings in the Ansar al Sunna mosque, the chief justice has discretion to assign a trial judge. This case was judged by one judge of first instance, Abdul Rahman Sherif, instead of the ordinary three-judge court for homicide. An appeal was taken to the appellate court and the Supreme Court, and the latter court confirmed the death sentence.32

Regarding the execution of the death sentence, Attorney General Shiddu said that, among other things, the death penalty will not be carried out if the relatives of the victim (or the victim, if surviving) forgive the convicted man and agree to accept monetary compensation instead. A sentence of execution will not be carried out until all the heirs of the victim have been surveyed by the court to determine whether or not they wish to forgive the convicted man. If one heir pardons the man, then there can be no execution. If one heir is under eighteen, then the court must delay execution of the sentence until that heir reaches the age of eighteen, according to the attorney general. Since there were sixteen victims in the Ansar al Sunna case, it was most likely that more than one had an heir under ageeighteen. We were unable to find out if the court had taken steps to ascertain the ages of the heirs and whether those over eighteen had pardoned the assailants.

The prosecutor general and the director general of the department of public law, both in the ministry of justice, had a different interpretation of the law. They told Human Rights Watch that if the family of the deceased comes forward and forgives the defendant, then there will be no execution. The court may contact the families to assure that there is no forgiveness, but this is not required. They referred us to Article 31 (b) of the Criminal Act of 1991, which says that retribution (qisas)33 shall be remitted in a case where the victim or some of his relatives have pardoned the convicted person, with or without consideration. Therefore they doubted if the families of the victims in the Ansar al Sunna case were all canvassed.34 This case suggests that the usual safeguards to the death penalty may not be applied in politicized cases - or that the provisions for clemency under shari'a are less rigorous than the attorney general claimed.

Death Sentences in Military Tribunals

The procedural opportunities for clemency under shari'a and civil law do not appear to have been applied to cases tried before military tribunals. In addition to the case of the executions after the alleged coup on April 24, 1990 and the executions in Juba in 1992, there is the case of businessman Magdi Mahjoub Mohamed Ahmed, whose one-day trial inside a military compound in December 1989, for the possession of foreign currency, resulted in the death penalty. Witnesses reported that Maj. Ibrahim Shams al Din, a member of the governing Revolutionary Command Council, attended the trial and influenced the judges to order the defendant's lawyer to leave the military compound where the trial was taking place, a serious violation of due process. Mahjoub received the death sentence. On the day the sentence was carried out, December 14, Maj. Shams al Din was seen outside Kober Prison reportedly awaiting confirmation of the execution. Contrary to regulations of the General Administration of Prisons - whereby executions are carried out immediately after the dawn prayer, about 3:00 a.m. - on this day the sentence was executed at thirty minutes past midnight. Thisspeed in execution was possibly an effort to avoid any last-minute review of the case or clemency.35

In early 1990, apparently to deter nonviolent resistance to the junta as well as army coup plotters, President Omar Hassan al Bashir said he would not commute any sentence of capital punishment. During a state visit to Bahrain, President al Bashir told the press that he would have Dr. Mamoun Mohamed al Hussein, the jailed head of the Sudan Medical Association, hanged. Dr. Mamoun was tried without counsel by a military tribunal with evidence reportedly obtained by torture. Dr. Mamoun was reportedly beaten so badly he was in a coma for four days.36 President al Bashir said that whoever else went out on strike, as most members of the Medical Association had done a few months before, deserved "execution and would not [be] allowed to appeal."37 This statement received wide international coverage which may have caused the president's plan to backfire. A national and international campaign was mounted to save Dr. Mamoun's life, and he was eventually pardoned.38

The death sentences of a number of political prisoners, many of whom were tried by a military tribunal, have been reduced to life imprisonment by executive act since 1991. Some of these prisoners' sentences were further reduced and, finally, they were released in amnesties. This was the sequence of sentence reductions in the case of some of those convicted in the 1991 coup attempt.

Conditions of Executions

Executions of prisoners tried in civilian courts (which sometimes include military personnel) are carried out in Kober Prison in Khartoum North and in the prisons in the nine old regional capitals. (See below.) Executions in Kober Prison are conducted by hanging in a small room isolated from the rest of the prison, constructed for this purpose when the British built this prison. The condemned man spends the night before his death in a room adjacent to the execution room. The execution is witnessed by the prison warden, a doctor, a judge, and a religious representative. The family is notified prior to the execution of the day fixed, and is allowed to take possession of the body and bury it. The prisoner director said two persons were executed for currency law violations in this way in 1993.

There is no death row where those condemned to death await execution for weeks or months. There is, however, a section of Kober Prison where those condemned to death are housed together with those condemned to life imprisonment. Dozens of people resided there on May 29, 1995, the day of our visit to Kober Prison.

During the Kober visit, we were shown a part of the prison referred to by prison authorities as "Nimeiri's Pavilion." It had a gallows on a high platform, constructed higher than the prison walls so that a hanging could be seen from outside the prison. This was the place of execution of seventy-five-year-old modernist Islamic scholar Mahmoud Mohamed Taha.39 The "Pavilion" also had an elevated cement "chopping block," and a chair where prisoners whose hands were to be amputated sat and were tied down. Neither has been used, the prison authorities told us, since President Nimeiri was overthrown in 1985.40

International law does not bar all death sentences but requires safeguards that appear to be lacking in practice in Sudan. Human Rights Watch opposes executions under law because of the inherent cruelty of the death penalty, the inherent fallibility of all criminal justice systems, and the irreversibility of executions.

PRISON CONDITIONS

The Kober Prison Population

Human Rights Watch visited Kober Prison on May 29, 1995, briefly toured the facility, spoke to prisoners at random and those chosen by us, and spoke to the prison director, Maj. Gen. Abu Bakr Mohamed Ashrriya, who had served in that position for twenty-one months, since August 1993. He said that Kober Prison had 1,066 prisoners, including sixty-four Sudan Security detainees, as of late May 1995. The prisoners included 933 convicts (of whom, they later told us, six werepolitical prisoners) and sixty-nine awaiting trial for culpable homicide. Those charged with lesser crimes are held in pre-trial detention in Omdurman Prison.41

Kober Prison, built between 1907 and 1912, is the largest prison in Sudan and has a capacity of up to 1,000.42 According to the prison director, other prisons are located in what were capitals of states, before the recent creation of new states.43 The total prison population of Sudan in 1995 was officially 40,500; the total prison capacity is said to be 50,000. There is a military prison at Omdurman for violations of the military code. Prisoners reportedly stay there for short periods.44

According to prison authorities, the inmates of Kober Prison are all twenty-one years or over, with all but four less than seventy years of age. The medical records of these four, whose age was assessed at the request of the prison director, were forwarded to the central prison authorities so that they could recommend to the president that they be released on the grounds of age.45

Prisoners are divided into living quarters according to their status. Generally prisoners are not permitted to move around the prison to visit prisoners of different status, the authorities told us.46 The largest category of the 1,066 prisoners appeared to be 933 convicts, subdivided into political prisoners (six at the time of our visit), those convicted of financial crimes, those sentenced to execution or life imprisonment, and other common criminals. The common criminals occupythe largest facility, a two-story brick building with large rooms lined with bunk beds.47

The other categories are those pending trial for culpable homicide (sixty-nine), and those detained without charges by Sudan Security (sixty-four), under security jurisdiction but inside the walls of Kober Prison. The authorities allowed Human Rights Watch to walk around the prison, but not to see inside the area where the security detainees were held, nor to interview any of them without permission from Sudan Security. Our prior and subsequent written and oral requests for interviews with security officers and to visit security detainees were not responded to by the government.

Political Prisoners

It is unclear how the authorities define "political prisoners." This category does not include security detainees. It appears to include some but not all persons convicted by military tribunals of attempted coups and other anti-government activities. For instance, among those omitted from the prison director's official list of "political prisoners" were two game wardens from Juba summarily convicted by a military tribunal in connection with the SPLA attack on Juba in June 1992, who were in Kober Prison.

Political prisoners are entitled, under Sudanese law, to "special treatment." We were told this means they have the right to beds, radios, portable televisions, to wear their own clothes instead of prison uniforms, and to receive food and cigarettes from their families. The authorities permit books, except those considered "against the government." Political prisoners have their own yard and bathing facilities, which we were permitted briefly to see, but are not permitted to move about in the sections designated for other prisoners in Kober Prison. The prison director said there were only sixteen political prisoners in all of Sudan, three civilians and the rest military.48

Political prisoners in Kober Prison released in 1994 and 1995 and before said that the treatment in Kober Prison by prison officers is "very good," in contrast to that of Sudan Security. According to these former prisoners, prison officers are themselves afraid of security and will not interfere with what security wants.49

Transfers of Political Prisoners

The Kober Prison director volunteered the information that a few days before our visit, nine political prisoners had been transferred to other prisons in Wad Medani and El Obeid.50 He said that they and 140 prisoners from the common criminal section were transferred because of overcrowding. Political prisoners, however, are housed in a special section of Kober, with ample room for the sixteen political prisoners who were there until a few days before our visit.

These transfers may have been measures intended to limit access to these prisoners by Human Rights Watch. The nine political prisoners transferred out of Kober Prison the week before Human Rights Watch visited were notified at 2:00 p.m. that day that they would be transferred. At midnight a bus arrived from security and all nine prisoners were taken from Kober. Most were still receiving medical treatment in Khartoum51 when they were transferred, and the treatment was not complete, according to a fellow prisoner in a position to know since they were living in the same section of the prison. The transfers also represented considerable hardship for the prisoners' families.52 One, Gaafar Yassin, comes from Atbara, according to the prison director, but was transferred to El Obeid, ten hours by carfarther away from his family, although the prison closest to Atbara is Kober, in Khartoum.53

Other transfers may be a consequence of prisoners' contact with former associates. A former navy officer, Mohamed Ali Jaknun, convicted in connection with a 1991 coup attempt, was sent to Shalla Prison in the western state of Darfur, from which he requested a transfer to be closer to his family in the eastern city of Port Sudan. The head of the prison system agreed and he was transferred to Port Sudan prison. After one month there, security, not the prison authorities, informed him they were transferring him to Kober Prison, apparently because his former navy colleagues came to see him in the Port Sudan prison; he had served twenty-two years in the navy at Port Sudan.54

Omdurman Prison for Women

Human Rights Watch was not able to visit the women's section of Omdurman Prison but we spoke with people familiar with it. They told us that in 1994 this section - called Omdurman Prison for Women - had about 300 women inmates, all convicted of common (not political) crimes, usually brewing alcohol. Perhaps 75-85 percent of the female prisoners are southern non-Muslims and most of them are in jail because they are too poor to pay the fine for brewing alcohol.55

Omdurman Prison was built during the al Mahdiya government (1881-98) and used then as a treasury. It has a maximum capacity of about 600 people in the men's and women's sections but is usually quite overcrowded, with often hundreds more than it has capacity for. Conditions are said to be very bad; the building reportedly has no sewage facility and raw sewage flows in open shallow trenches to collection pits beyond the prison walls. The prison department has repeatedly devised detailed plans to phase out this prison and move inmates to a facility to beconstructed in the outskirts of Omdurman, but failed to secure government funding.56

Omdurman Prison for Women houses not only women but also male juveniles (street children), because of overcrowding in the men's prison and prison regulations requiring separation of underage inmates from adults. It also houses young children living with their incarcerated mothers.

The women's branch of Shabab al Wattan (Organization of the Youth of the Homeland, an NIF mass organization) helps run the Popular Defense Forces (PDF) program for women inmates57 and provides services to female prisoners. Other local NGOs work in Omdurman prison: one provides some legal assistance to the women and another maintains a nursery for children under five imprisoned with their mothers. While these NGOs are given free access to the inmates, who appreciate their services, the administration of Omdurman Prison for Women is said to provide food of very poor quality, and to have denied access to necessary health care. At least two unattended delivery cases were reported in 1994, leading to the deaths of the newborns: prisoners alleged the wardens were slow in responding to the women's request to take the mothers to the nearby Omdurman Maternity Hospital.58

Although benefactors have donated mattresses for women to sleep on, and cots for newborns, the prison administration is said to keep these essentials under lock and key, claiming that women would "misuse" them. Meanwhile, women sleep directly on the ground or on straw mats. Due to overcrowding and lack of hygiene, skin diseases are rampant, and infectious diseases take their toll among the vulnerable under fives who are in prison with their mothers.59

In 1993, on the occasion of an announced visit to this prison by Gasper Biro, the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Sudan, the administration hastily tried to clean up the premises: they issued mattresses to the inmates, and rolled out baby beds. Underage detained street boys living in the women's section of the prison reportedly were taken for a truck ride until the special rapporteur left the prison. Wardens went to the extent of borrowing indoor flower pots from a neighboring plant nursery to improve the look of the place. After the visit, everything returned to normal.

During that visit, the special rapporteur picked an inmate at random and talked to her privately at length. Less than a week later, Attorney General Shiddu appeared at the prison to interview the inmate about what she told the rapporteur.60

Conditions Deteriorate at Omdurman Prison; Prisoner Releases

In 1994, a group of women inmates who returned to Omdurman Prison from forty five-days in training at a Popular Defense Forces camp near Wad Medani protested because the releases promised them were not forthcoming. They were reportedly angered at the conditions of their transport back from the camp site in Wad Medani, 184 kilometers from Khartoum, to the prison. They were crammed in the back of two trucks, and were exposed to the sun during the long trip. Two infants in the company of their mothers reportedly died as a direct result of the conditions of the return trip.61 General conditions in the prison had also reportedly worsened, with overcrowding and food rations shrinking and the quality deteriorating to a point where prison food became inedible.62

On the day before the chief justice's October 1994 visit to Omdurman Prison, male prisoners, on the other side of the wall adjoining the women's section, protested, banging on the doors of their cells and shouting. Wardens fired in the air to break up the riot. Women joined in the protests. Prison releases ordered October 18, 1994 by the chief justice were intended to defuse this situation.63 This order was one of the first acts of Obeid Haj Ali upon his appointment as chief justice of the Supreme Court: 102 women were released; the only ones excluded were those convicted of homicide. In addition, he ordered some 230 male prisoners released, also excluding those convicted of homicide.64

Conditions worsened at Omdurman and other prisons. In early August 1995 even General Administrator of Prisons Maj. Gen. al Shaikh al Rayah announced that there had been a marked deterioration in the jails, with prisoners going hungry and some dying for lack of medical care because financial assistanceto prisons was totally inadequate. He said there were 1,000 sick women in jail and 300 children with their imprisoned mothers.65 He called for the release of all prisoners with children and those serving sentences shorter than six months.66 In late August 1995, women prisoners with children were released by order of the president, among them 101 imprisoned mothers in Khartoum State, according to the director of General Administration of Prisons.67 The chief justice of the Supreme Court said in September 1995 that he would release 148 sick, elderly and disabled prisoners from Kober Prison.68

CONFISCATION WITHOUT DUE PROCESS IN SECURITY CASES

There have been many cases of home confiscations without due process as an apparent punishment for engaging in opposition politics. According to attorneys familiar with the laws governing confiscations, including the constitutional decrees issued after the 1989 coup, the president is not authorized to confiscate homes unless compensation is given and the confiscation is for the common good, public benefit, or national interest, such as use for schools, hospitals, or roads. Under laws passed prior to the coup, confiscation was considered a punishment which could only be imposed after a judicial hearing.69

A case of an arbitrary and unlawful confiscation was that of Omer Nour El Deim, a leader in exile of the banned Umma Party, on March 28, 1995. According to a person knowledgeable about the case, twenty security officers arrived at the house at 9:30 p.m. and asked the wife of Mr. El Deim and his two sons and two daughters, who were residing there, to vacate immediately. The officers did not identify themselves. They had no written order. They told the wife that "the president was confiscating the house" and she should leave. The family moved to the home of relatives that night. They were allowed to return to the houseafter signing an undertaking to evacuate it in two weeks. A car owned by the older son was confiscated as well.70

During the two week period, the family tried many avenues of appeal, including meetings with the attorney general and minister of justice, the chief justice, and prominent NIF leaders such as Dr. Hassan al Turabi. The Attorney General admitted that he had no copy of the confiscation order, and could do nothing about it in any case because the action was initiated by the presidency. Dr. Turabi reportedly told the family that El Deim entered into "an alliance with the devil" and deserved to be punished.

This house, located in the upper-income Riyad section of Khartoum, was co-owned by El Deim and his wife. Not even her property rights could be asserted in court since there was no written order of confiscation and no written identification of who was responsible for the confiscation. No compensation was ever offered to her or the family.

The government said that the confiscation was done because Omer Nour El Deim, as head of the Umma Party in exile, had entered into an agreement with the SPLA, the armed southern rebels.71 El Deim also testified on Sudan before the U.S. House of Representatives in March 1995. Whatever his actions, confiscation without due process is not a permissible punishment.

Since the coup, many homes of opposition leaders, both in exile and still in the country, have been confiscated. They reportedly include the houses of Amin Mekki Medani (president of the Sudan Human Rights Organisation operating in exile), Farouk Abu Eisa (now head of the Arab Lawyers Union in Cairo and recently the spokesperson for the opposition National Democratic Alliance), Mohamed El Hassan Abdullah Yassin (former DUP member of the Head of State Council and businessman, now in Cairo), Mohamed Osman al Mirghani and Ahmed al Mirghani (leaders of the banned DUP and the Khatmiyya religious sect), and Gen. Fathi Ahmed Ali, leader of the Legitimate Command (the high command of the Sudanese armed forces ousted by the coup of 1989, who have reconstituted themselves outside the country). In addition, according to opposition advocates, all land on the White Nile belonging to the family of Sadiq al Mahdi, leader of theUmma Party and head of the Ansar religious sect, has been confiscated,72 and land of the Mirghani family in Kassala, Khartoum, and northern Sudan has been confiscated. The home of Mohamed Osman Mirghani was converted to a head office for the People's Police while that of his brother Ahmed was donated to the Youth of the Homeland Organization that turned it into a private hospital.73

Homes and other property belonging to Sudan Security detainees and those accused of security offenses have been seized pretrial and used by security. In the Explosives Case, the property of accused Mohamed Hassan Abad, who was tried in absentia and acquitted, was seized by security before the trial. After acquittal, at the request of his advocate, the court ordered security to vacate the home and return the rest of the property, consisting of two cars and two boats. As of June 1995, this had not been done, according to those familiar with the case.74 In some cases, agents of Sudan Security use cars confiscated from security detainees for their routine work. Houses of security detainees have been used for security work.

Security also has confiscated other items of private property at will during office and house searches conducted without warrant. Personal computers, typewriters, copiers and faxes are particularly prized. A desktop and a laptop computer were confiscated, without warrant or receipt, from the house of Abdel Rahim Min Allah during the search that preceded his arrest in April 1995. Neither were returned to him at his release four months later.75

Private libraries of countless security detainees have been plundered under the pretext of confiscating loosely defined "subversive literature." As a rule, this property has been taken without court order, due process, or compensation. (See Chapter VII, Freedom of Expression.)

THE LAW AND THE NORTH-SOUTH DIVIDE

Longstanding southern fears of marginalization and second-class citizenship have been sharpened by legal developments since the introduction ofshari'a in 1983, and particularly by the way the law has been administered and enforced under the current government since 1989.76 Sudan is a highly diverse country; no ethnic group is in the clear majority and among religious groups only 60 to 70 percent are Muslim. Southerners are mostly practitioners of traditional African religions or Christianity.

The British policy was to separate southern Sudan and its African peoples from northern Arabized Sudan and Islamization. Under the British, northern Sudanese were prohibited from residing in the south except by official permission and free movement of southerners to the north was restricted. Abel Alier, a respected former judge and southern politician, wrote of British rule in the south (1898-1956):

The spread of Arabic and Islam was curbed; even Northern Sudanese traditional dress was frowned upon and discouraged; English and the indigenous languages of the South were correspondingly encouraged and promoted. A conference organised under the auspices of the Church Missionary Society was held in Equatoria in 1928. It selected English and seven main languages for educational instruction in the Southern Sudan. Arabic was excluded.77

Alier believes that this separation was motivated in part by fear of revival of the slave trade, which flourished during the Turko-Egyptian administration and continued during the Mahdiya (1881-98).

Even after the reconquest [by the Anglo-Egyptian forces in 1898], the slave trade was still alive and the slave routes from Bahr El Ghazal to Darfur and North-Eastern Upper Nile to Blue Nile were busy. The Anglo-Egyptian administration could not thus gamble with the possibility of the revival of the slave trade and so it took the steps it did in 1922.78

This separation of north and south did not continue after independence in 1956, and northern Sudanese replaced the British as government officials in the south, bringing Arabic and Islam with them. Foreign Christian missionaries were expelled in 1964, and the day of rest changed in the south from Sunday to Friday, as in the rest of Sudan. In 1983 shari'a was introduced as the source of law for all of Sudan. Efforts are now underway to make Arabic the language of instruction in schools in the south, where few are fluent in Arabic.

A chief concern of southern jurists is that, under certain provisions of shari'a, non-Muslims will have second-class citizenship as a matter of law.79 They are also concerned about the lack of respect of diversity for their distinctive southern cultures, which touches on the rights of the southern peoples under Article 27 of the ICCPR:

In those States in which ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities exist, persons belonging to such minorities shall not be denied the right, in community with the other members of their group, to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practice their own religion, or to use their own language.

Historian Douglas H. Johnson has written that southerners now feel under attack not only from a dominant religion but also from a twinned dominant culture, with steady erosion of their definition as separate peoples:

There is a stronger feeling [in the 1990s] than in the 1970s that the south is facing an assault of religious and racial intolerance mounted by some segments of the north, often with the external support of wealthy Arab nations. Nimeiri's imposition of the shari'a is one example of this, but the election campaigns [1986] also emphasised the financial and political support some political parties receive from abroad, support which comes not so much for reasons of their proposals for foreign policy, but for their policy towards spreading Islam in the Sudan.80

Another historian notes that there is a large overlap of the definition of Arab and Muslim in Sudan, unlike the situation in other African countries whoseMuslim populations do not define themselves as Arabs but rather as Kenyans, Nigerians, Senegalese, and so on.

More than for most of the other Muslim peoples of Africa, for the Sudanese to be a Muslim is to be an Arab. It is this deep assimilation of Islam and identification with Arab culture and society which is expressed in the universal claim to Arab ancestry and the overwhelming currency of Arabic.81

The political debate in the north is, to a large extent, over which type of Islam is the proper form of Islam for the state to endorse, according to historians.82 The traditional political parties that are based on Sufi sects propose one variant (with former prime minister Sadiq al Mahdi as head of the Umma Party and the Ansar sect on which it is based, for example, criticizing from a religious point of view the Islamic practices of the ruling National Islamic Front), and the nonsectarian NIF proposing a different and more rigid Islamic approach. In the south, however, "the very idea of the possibility of this kind of debate as being a `national' stake is felt as a hegemonic attempt of the `Arab' north to impose its political, economic and social identity upon the whole state of Sudan."83

Prior to the adoption of shari'a in 1983, criminal law and civil law (the laws regulating torts, contracts, corporations, banking, commercial instruments and other non-criminal matters), were not based on shari'a but on British common law (adapted for India) and Sudanese legislation. The application of shari'a was limited to personal law matters of Muslims.84 Christians were subject to their own religious law in these matters. Those, mostly southerners, who were neither Muslims nor Christians were subject to customary law (of the Dinka, Nuer, etc.) in personal matters.

In 1983, President Nimeiri, using dictatorial powers, passed laws seemingly based on shari'a law, including the Criminal Act, the Evidence Act, andthe Judgments (Basic Rules) Act.85 These laws were known as the September Laws.86

Nimeiri's September 1983 introduction of shari'a was the result of his political alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood. This alliance was a clear break with his southern political allies. That break was already obvious in his increasing disregard for the regional autonomy granted the south in 1972 under the Addis Ababa accords which ended the first civil war in the south (1955-72). Some southerners in the army had already gone into armed revolt in May 1983 against the central government because of the whittling away of this autonomy. The rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army was formed shortly thereafter.

This enforced turn to Islam did not prove as politically popular as Nimeiri had hoped. After introduction of shari'a hudud punishments, a wave of floggings, bloody amputations and executions took place that shocked Sudanese society and contributed to the downfall of the Nimeiri regime in April 1985. The parliamentary government was on the verge of revoking the shari'a laws in June 1989 as part of a negotiated peace with the SPLM/A, when the coup intervened, and shari'a was not revoked; instead, a 1988 draft "true" Islamic penal code prepared by the NIF became the Criminal Act of 1991 after the NIF took power, which southerners regarded as another setback for them.

Southern advocates point to various ways they believe this legal system and particularly the 1991 Criminal Act are prejudicial to non-Muslims and most southerners. First, the government claims that shari'a does not apply to the south, which is incorrect. All Sudanese legislation, including all penal law, applies in the south; the only exception is for certain penalties in the 1991 Criminal Act, which explicitly states that it is

aimed at observing shari'a as the main source of legislation, so that its spirit shall infiltrate into the Act and its principlesintermingle with the provisions thereof, and its guidance manifest itself in the added or omitted provisions.87

Shari'a is applicable to virtually all matters of civil law other than matters of family and succession under the Civil Transactions Act of 1984.88

The 1991 Criminal Act provides only that "the Southern States are excluded from the enforcement of certain provisions," which are listed: 1) drinking alcohol, or dealing with it; 2) sale of dead animals; 3) capital theft; 4) defamation of unchastity; 5) hudud punishments in offenses of armed robbery and adultery; and 6) penalty of gisas or retribution.89 All other parts of the Criminal Act apply in the south.90

This nonenforcement of hudud penalties in the south is not guaranteed and may not be permanent, southerners fear. There is no constitutional barrier to imposing the full force of shari'a on the south. Indeed, southern jurists point to an important provision in the Criminal Act that would permit northerners to impose shari'a on the south. The Criminal Act states that the shari'a (hudud) penalties will not be applied pending "completion of the federal legislative bodies, and decision on such provisions and punishments, having full regard to the recommendations of the national deliberation conference on peace problems."91 Southerners fear that northerners imbued with the spirit of jihad who have moved and will move to southern garrison towns for commerce or government jobs, including PDF zealots and NIF militants, will elect themselves to the local legislatures and vote to apply all provisions of the Criminal Act of 1991 to the southern states. The voter turnout is low everywhere in the country, but it has traditionally been very low in the south, and as a result, the NIF has been able to elect its candidates in some southern states.92

The entire Criminal Act of 1991, including its ban on alcohol, adultery, and defamation of unchastity, is applicable to non-Muslim southerners and otherswho live outside the southern states. More than two million southerners have been displaced to the north by war and famine and most are not Muslims. Here the clash of cultures, African and Arab, is most acute. Perhaps 80 percent of women prisoners in the north are southern women who have been jailed for brewing alcohol, a livelihood that is not punished in the south. Sexual practices not punished in the south may be punishable by death in the north.

There are important differences between what shari'a outlaws in both north and south, and customary law. An example given by one southern legal scholar is the crime of adultery, which is a criminal offense (and a hudud offense under shari'a) and not part of the civil family code left to customary law.

Shari'a defines adultery as sexual intercourse between a man and a woman without there being a lawful [bond] between them. What is a lawful [bond] is to be determined with reference to Islamic jurisprudence as provided by s. 2 of the Judgement (Basic Rules) Act, 1983. Accordingly, sex within a levirate relationship, or between couples in a `ghost marriage', which are regarded as lawful under customary laws of many southern communities, can be regarded as adulterous.93

The penalty for adultery in the north may be death, even if both parties are non-Muslims; in the south, the maximum penalty may be three years' imprisonment and a fine, even if both parties are Muslims.94

Even in the south, southern jurists are afraid that the uniqueness and continued existence of southern peoples as communities will be destroyed by the imposition of a "alien" Islamic legal scheme that replaces African customs regarding family life, inheritance, custody, and other matters. Customary law of the Dinka, Nuer, Shilluk, Zande, Bari, and other southern peoples is supposed to govern in matters of family and succession. Dinka law was codified in 1984 but other southern customary laws are not codified.

Uncodified customary law will wither away. This has long been the trend, as described by one historian:

Before and during the colonial period [in Sudan] the Arab personality imposed itself upon the perception of the history ofthe area as a whole. The Arabo-Islamic culture derived this strong position from the successful marriage between its political and religious traditions. This domination has been facilitated by the specific gravity of an old written culture - the Arab culture - faced with the unwritten African ancestry. From such a point of view 'written history' tends to be settled in the loopholes of 'non-history'.95

This trend has been bucked to a certain extent up until recently by the British "indirect rule" of the south through tribal chiefs, and after independence by the efforts of southern judges to apply customary law, appreciating its importance to their communities and being familiar with its tenets from their own upbringing.

In his early days as Supreme Court chief justice in late 1994, Obeid Haj Ali showed an interest in further codifying customary law, and southerners give him credit for this. Before his appointment, he wrote on the subject,96 and afterwards he even arranged a conference on "Native Administration" in Khartoum on January 9, 1995 to present the case for codification. Many northerners in the judicial and political systems, both at the conference and later, rebuffed the effort; Dr. Hassan al Turabi, who did not attend the conference, when consulted reportedly said that customary law was primitive and should not be perpetuated. The plans for further codification apparently died there.97

Since the NIF came to power in 1989, southern judges in the south have been steadily transferred north and replaced by young northern judges who have no familiarity with customary law, a subject not taught in Sudanese law schools. Nor has the Supreme Court instructed them to apply customary law. They are left to their own devices. Even the court of appeal for the largest southern city, Juba, was transferred to Khartoum in 1989 because of the war, removing the appellate court even further from the south.98

During the Human Rights Watch trip to Juba in June 1995, we interviewed the provincial judge, Judge Tafiq Hassan Mohamed El Nour, the highest-ranking judge in Juba. At his own initiative, the judge was making an effort to learn customary law, of which he knew nothing before arriving in Juba two years earlier.This is commendable, but it is not a substitute for a judicial system that is required to know and apply customary law in family and inheritance matters - giving due consideration of those elements that, insofar as they violate international standards, should be excluded.

The judge said there were nine judges in Juba. He gave us their names; they were all Arabic names, indicating that they probably were not of southern origin. These judges sit on appeal of cases arising from local courts where traditional law usually is applied, since many of the persons chosen to fill the lowest level of judicial posts are community leaders and chiefs.99 Whatever the decision of the local judge, the appeal goes to a judge not of southern origin and without legal training in customary law. All the law graduate judges sitting in Juba have training in shari'a law.100 These judges have applied shari'a personal law tonon-Muslims allegedly because they do not know any other law and are under no specific instructions from the Supreme Court to use customary law.

Southerners told of a case in which such problems arose: in shari'a the equivalent of a bride price must be returned to the husband on divorce. In Dinka customary law, bride wealth is the property of the wife's relatives and they keep it upon divorce. A northern judge sitting on such a case in the south ordered a woman jailed because her family refused to return the bride price to her husband on divorce, even though neither wife nor husband were Muslims. The judge applied shari'a, despite the fact that Dinka customary law has been codified.101

Southern jurists speaking on condition of anonymity, say that the future of non-Muslim judges under this system is bleak. They understand that the NIF believes as a matter of principle that justice in an Islamic state must be administered by Muslim judges.102

These southerners say a gradual elimination of non-Muslim judges throughout the country is going on. There are three Supreme Court judges (of eighty-seven) who are southerners, three Court of Appeals judges (of more than one hundred), three provincial judges (out of about 200), and at most twelve district judges (out of more than 400). When the NIF came into power in 1989, southern judges started to dwindle in number, although the few that are left are brought out for visiting foreign delegations to meet. Fewer southerners were admitted to universities and law faculties after 1989, so that there are fewer candidates for judicial positions, according to southern jurists.

Thirteen southern judges have been dismissed since the 1989 coup (and sixteen left voluntarily, some to join the SPLA). The thirteen were dismissed as a matter of court discipline. Southern advocates say that Supreme Court Chief Justice Jalal Ali Lufti broke with tradition to purge southern or secular judges. In the past the practice in disciplinary matters was for the judicial board to issue the punishment, quashed or confirmed by the chief justice. Under this government, however, the chief justice reportedly took the unprecedented step of imposing a higher penalty than that suggested by the board: dismissal.

The government of national salvation brought about sweeping changes in the military, security and administrative structures in the country immediately after assuming power in 1989, with the apparent aims of ensuring its immediate and long term political survival and creating the conditions for an effective implementation of its program of reshaping and "disciplining" Sudanese society. The Sudan Police Force underwent its share of radical transformations, subjected to a dual approach consisting of selective purges and the extension or transfer of police powers to other groups. The officer corps of the regular police suffered successive waves of strategic dismissals while the government accorded police powers and authority to various civilian groups affiliated with the de facto ruling party, the National Islamic Front. At the same time, the police force was considerably enlarged through the formation of new branches. Recruits to these new branches were chosen from a narrow base of party members and sympathizers.

The government restructured the official Sudan Police Force to create a unified police force from the various autonomous regular forces that previously operated under the Ministry of Interior. The 1992 Police Force Law provides for the creation, under the direct command of the General Director of Police, of a "General Administration of Specialized Police." The specialized police units thus incorporated, under the designation of General Administrations, are: the Public Order Police, Customs Police, Prisons and Reformation Police, Civil Defense Police, Protection of Wildlife Police, and the Passport, Immigration, Nationality and Identity Police. Other units of the regular police force include the Central Reserve Police, Supporting [Administrative] Units Police and, as the 1992 law provides, "any other category that the Head of State issues a decision of incorporating in the police force."1

The legal structure of the regular police does not include the People's Police Force, a parallel force organized under the Order Establishing the People's Police Force of 1992. The government early on established a wide network of surveillance through neighborhood committees that go by the official name of Popular Committees for Surveillance and Services. Following protests from the regular police about unlawful use of police powers by these committees, the government introduced the semi-regular People's Police Force - whose recruits are nominated by the committees - to exercise police powers now removed from

the committees. This force formed part of an intricate network that included the Public Order and Behavior Police which appears to have originally been conceived of as a "moral" brigade intended to enforce the provisions of the Public Order Law of Khartoum State promulgated in 1992. The last addition to the network was made in 1993 when the ministry of interior established a Deployment of Comprehensive Security Plan, and an official police force with the same name.

The overriding agenda of this network appeared to be both political and religious. On the political front, post-independence Sudan witnessed the successes of "people's power" during two historic turning points in October 1964 and April 1985, when a combination of political general strikes at places of work and scattered day-long demonstrations in residential areas resulted in bringing down unpopular military dictatorships. In 1988 similar tactics led to the weakening of the elected civilian government of Prime Minister Sadiq al Mahdi, later toppled in June 1989 by the third military takeover in Sudan's recent history. The present government took steps to prevent a recurrence of this pattern. Once it effectively stamped out free trade union activities, a primary security concern of the government remained the deterrence of spontaneous eruptions of anger and organized popular protests in the residential neighborhoods of the capital city. The stifling of unions and civic associations and the rampant persecution of union and student activists aimed at ruling out the first line of civil opposition to the military rule. The creation of the People's Police and the Deployment of Comprehensive Security Police and the dilution of police powers would bring about better control of the population in the residential areas and neutralize political opposition to the regime at that second level. In addition the Public Order, Comprehensive Security and People's Police force appear to have the combined task of ensuring a gradual tightening of religiously-based controls on Sudanese society.

Under the scheme, various security agencies routinely assume powers which prior laws of Sudan reserved to the police alone. The most damning denunciation of this trend was reportedly made by no other than the first minister of interior under the national salvation government who resigned in protest of this amid other serious matters. In mid-April 1991, Minister of Interior Gen. Faisal Ali Abu Salih presented a strongly worded letter of resignation from his ministerial position, and from the membership of the then ruling Revolutionary Command Council, the terms of which later leaked to the public. Top among his grievances was the conflict of mandates between the police, military intelligence and the sprawling branches of the security apparatus. He cited as an example of this conflict that although issuance of passports and exit visas is the prerogative of the ministry of interior, it is routine practice for other security organs to confiscate passports and annul duly obtained exit visas without referring the matter to that

ministry. To this day, this abuse is a frequent occurrence in Sudanese ports of departure.2

Gen. Abu Salih also reportedly complained about the impunity of members of the popular committees and Popular Defense Forces, which he said was eroding the rule of law and the credibility of the regular police. This particular conflict was resolved by confirming the police powers of popular committees through the medium of the People's Police. The minister also reportedly expressed his resentment about the humiliation of police agents and officers at the hands of army soldiers who were until then in charge of the expeditious execution of rulings of the Public Order Courts.3 One reason behind the creation of the Public Order and Behavior Police, with a mandate of carrying out such measures as evictions and floggings ordered by Public Order Courts, appears to have been the reconciliation of this conflict.

The final straw which reportedly hastened Gen. Abu Salim's resignation was a confrontation that occurred in October 1990 between police and security agents. The police raided a farm in the Khartoum suburb of Halfayia where individuals from six Arab and Islamic countries were covertly undergoing military training under the watchful eye of Sudanese security agencies, but without the knowledge of the police, according to a opposition leader.4

These developments have given rise to a wide range of abuses and violations of the rights of citizens to privacy, freedom of association and freedom of opinion and expression. The new police organs committed brutalities which victimized scores of individuals suspected of political or moral misconduct (the latter also having assumed "political" dimensions) or assumed guilty of some criminal offense or another. An atmosphere of fear and malaise developed in work places, where progovernment unions spied on workers, and in the residential areas as any one of the police agencies, or all of them together, lent their authority to the shadowy surveillance activities of members of NIF mass organizations.

PUBLIC ORDER AND BEHAVIOR POLICE AND THE LAWS THEY ENFORCE

In June 1992, the uniformed units of a newly created police force called the "Public Order and Behavior Police" made their first appearance in the streetsof Khartoum. This force was a unit of the regular police force which initially had a narrow mandate. Agents of Public Order and Behavior Police wore the regular police uniform, with an added special arm band that distinguished them from other units. Among their duties are to rid the city of "vice," "corruption," alcohol consumption, to organize market places and to "discipline and control public appearance." They were usually armed with long clubs and handguns.

They used this gear soon after their initial deployment in 1992 in daily kasha (sweep) campaigns. These were infamous campaigns to "cleanse" the streets of the capital of petty vendors, street children, the mentally impaired and "idle" people, who are seen as scars on the face of the city. The kasha campaigns usually ended up targeting members of the displaced community and other destitute migrants from marginalized areas and minority groups.

Later in 1992, agents of the Public Order and Behavior Police were assigned to enforce the provisions of the Law of Public Order for Khartoum State, promulgated by the state government in November 1992. This local law prohibits women from selling food or drinks in the streets or in public squares between the hours of 5:00 p.m. and 5:00 a.m. Other provisions require the segregation of the sexes in public transport seating and require agencies dealing with the public to be responsible for separating men and women,5 although enforcement of this provision is not widespread. The law also forbids holding any public parties with music except with the consent of the relevant authority. Private parties with music are also forbidden except with the consent of the local popular committee (in writing) and the local authorities,6 which consent is usually since such parties are a firmly entrenched social institution in Sudan. The provisions of this law also require closure of all commercial shops and markets during the weekly Friday prayers.

The Law of Public Order for Khartoum State does not specifically require the enforcement of a dress code for women. There was a long, concerted propaganda campaign led personally by the governor of the capital in the early 1990s to prepare for the gradual imposition of hejab, a strict Islamic dress code for women involving enveloping dress and head covering.7 This differs from the traditional Sudanese women's garment, the toub, a gauzy colorful cotton wrap five meters long that loosely covers the head. Authorities concurrently introduced coercive measures, requiring women workers in the public sector to adopt an Islamic style of dress. They also regulated women's access to schools, offices,buses and public parks, making it conditional upon compliance with that dress code. When Sudanese women rejected some of these dress regulations, a defacto but unstable compromise prevailed whereby the toub was deemed acceptable as long as the hair was covered by a separate scarf.

It would appear that the resistance of the regular police force to enforcing these and other new standards led several lobbying groups within the NIF ruling elite to create the Public Order and Behavior Police and the People's Police Force with missions and priorities similar to enforcing the hejab. Indeed, the energies of the Public Order and Behavior Police were largely used during its early existence to enforce the hejab. The regular police force apparently managed over time to assimilate the Public Order Police and Behavior in part, assigning to it some aspects of routine police duties such as criminal investigation and drug enforcement. The "moral cleansing" of streets, markets and neighborhood remains, however, high on the agenda of the Public Order and Behavior Police.

Outside the capital, the public order laws are stricter. In Wad Medani (Central State), the Law of Public Discipline and Conduct, Law Number 2 for 1992, regulates women's dress, and a Muslim woman on the street or in the workplace or in any public place without Islamic dress may be punished by a flogging of not more than twenty-five lashes, a fine, or both.8 The occasions on which men and women might be in contact or alone together are also regulated in Wad Medani: men are not permitted to work in or profit from women's beauty parlors (Article 8), and the physical plant of beauty salons is regulated: "the site must have one entrance which must be the same as the exit." (Article 9). Dancing in any form between men and women at private parties is regulated by punishing - with thirty lashes or a fine or both - the person holding the party which leads to this dancing. (Article 13(1)). Any (unrelated) woman found inside the home of an unmarried man "will be punished by a flogging of no more than twenty-five lashes," a fine or both. Any man found in the home "with such a woman, or permitting her presence," will face the same punishment. (Article 14).

Women's economic activities are penalized by a prohibition on practicing her trade between 5:00 p.m. and 5:30 a.m. without a permit from the "relevant local authorities," on penalty of flogging, a fine or both, and the court is permitted to seize her work-related equipment and materials.(Article 5 (2)). This provision,which appears in the section dealing with women's modesty, falls hardest on women who prepare food for public consumption and sell it on the streets.

Abuses by Public Order and Behavior Police

In June 1994, the Public Order and Behavior Police made a public commitment to realize the slogan of an alcohol-free capital within one year. By November 1994, a spokesperson for the force observed that the "Year Without Alcohol" campaign had been a major success, stating that the force had destroyed 10 million Sudanese pounds worth of alcohol in two weeks.9 On December 8, 1994, the Public Order and Behavior Police shot and killed two citizens at Mandela Camp for displaced southerners, situated south of the Green Belt of Khartoum. The two were Malual Tong Lual, a Dinka and former employee of the military corporation, and Awad Zara John, a retired soldier. An eyewitness reported that the police raided the camp in search for local brew and found nothing suspicious. They reportedly were attempting to confiscate the cooking utensils of one woman when on-lookers tried to stop them. The Public Order Police opened fire on the two victims, killing Tong instantly while Zara died from his wounds at the hospital in the same night.10

The targets of the Public Order and Behavior Police are mainly displaced people from southern Sudan who took refuge in the capital area from the war. Ill-adapted to the life in the north, and coming from a different cultural and religious background, they found out the hard way that being themselves may be considered unlawful behavior. The Public Order and Behavior Police has detained on charges of adultery and held for trial by the Public Order Courts scores of southern couples duly married in accordance with their own customary law, but who failed to produce written proof of the marriage "contract."11 Southern displaced women, who due to the ravages of the war have become heads of households, often resort to the distillation and sale of alcohol as the only means available to them for making a living and supporting their families. This puts them in direct confrontation with the law. They constitute the overwhelming majority of women jailed for this crime.

Public Order Courts

Public Order Courts were created by order of the chief justice of the Supreme Court to provide a fast track for the administration of justice under public order laws and related regulations. There were a number of Public Order Courts in Khartoum in 1995, including the famous ones in Khartoum 2 and another in the city center. Each court has one judge and there is one appellate judge in Khartoum to hear appeals from the Public Order Courts there. In 1995 the appellate judge was Judge Abdel Jelil, appointed by the prior chief justice, Jalal Ali Lufti.

The offenses over which the Public Order Courts apparently have jurisdiction vary. In Khartoum, they have tried cases in violation of the alcohol and theft provisions of the Criminal Act of 1991, and for violations of the Law of Public Order for Khartoum State of 1992.

Public Order Courts are supposed to provide speedy justice, but it appears that their justice is at times so hasty that the defendant is denied due process. This is routine in the case of violations of Article 79 of the Criminal Act of 1991, "Dealing in Alcohol."12 For instance, in a morning sitting in a Public Order Court in Khartoum waiting for a case, one attorney saw fifteen southern women convicted for brewing alcohol in trials that lasted between five and thirty minutes each; they were the only persons on trial that day for that offense. The defendants were not permitted to bring in witnesses but the police testified and displayed confiscated brewing equipment (barrels). The defendants offered defenses such as denying that the equipment was their property, or asserting that others were present in the house over whom they had no control. They had been arrested the day before the trial, or on the same day as the trial.13

Most were sentenced to a short term in prison and a fine which they could not pay, so the time in prison was extended accordingly. The penalty for brewing alcohol was a maximum of one year's imprisonment or a fine. The maximum fine imposed in 1995 for brewing alcohol was Ls. 50,000 or 100,000 (U.S. $94.70 or189.40), at a time when the minimum monthly wage was not more than Ls. 6,000 (U.S. $11.36); in 1993 the fine had been Ls. 5,000.14

The sentences are served in Omdurman Women's Prison, to which the defendants are sent the same day. Appeals are expedited but rarely taken because of the perception that they are futile; most women are released from prison as a result of pardons or clemency, not as a result of judicial appeals.

Public Order Courts also enforce the laws against drinking alcohol. Human Rights Watch takes no position on a prohibition of alcohol consumption per se, but notes that the prohibition, drafted to apply specifically to Muslims, poses problems in the fair administration of justice in a plural society.

Pursuant to the terms of Article 78 of the 1991 Criminal Act, it is a criminal offense for Muslims to drink, possess or manufacture alcohol. The punishment for this crime is "whipping with forty lashes."15 There are many cases of enforcement of this law. In early 1995, for example, a (Muslim) policeman was with (Muslim) friends who were drinking alcohol; he said he was not drinking. At the moment that he went into a different room, the police raided the front room and took everyone in it to the station. The policeman and the families of the detainees followed. The accused were tried and flogged the same day. They reportedly received eighty lashes on their buttocks (no clothing was removed) and they did not appear to bleed.16

Police usually detain all people in a room or a house where they suspect there has been drinking. In another case in January 1995, a non-drinking man was sitting with his drinking neighbors. All were taken in by the police. They remained in jail for two days, but escaped punishment because they were no longer drunk by the time they arrived in court and the police forgot to obtain a doctor's certificate proving their alcohol consumption.17

The law prohibiting Muslims from drinking, possessing or manufacturing alcohol is not applicable to non-Muslims. (Article 78). Non-Muslims may, however, be convicted of dealing in alcohol as defined in Article 79. Non-Muslimsstoring or possessing alcohol for their own consumption could not legally purchase it (and no one could legally sell it to them) but could brew small quantities for personal consumption. On many occasions non-Muslim women claiming to have manufactured alcohol solely for their own consumption have been convicted of dealing in alcohol.

In some cases those drinking alcohol may be charged with drinking and creating a nuisance18 and this crime is not limited to Muslims, so that even non-Muslims may face imprisonment for a term not exceeding one month or with whipping not exceeding forty lashes, and possibly a fine.

Public Order Courts may also enforce the laws against stealing, with the penalty of flogging. In early May 1995, an eighteen-year-old boy was flogged in the central market for theft. He had just been sentenced to sixty lashes; two men in uniform lashed him on his back as he hugged a post; he was not required to take off his shirt. The two men each gave him thirty lashes. The boy collapsed on the ground when the lashing was over, according to an eyewitness.19

CREATION AND POWERS OF THE PEOPLE'S POLICE FORCE

Frictions emerged between the regular police and the neighborhood Popular Committees of Surveillance and Services when the latter assumed police powers of search and arrest in many offenses. Members of these committees, invariably NIF sympathizers, formed neighborhood patrols in various residential areas of the capital to arrest patrons of alcohol brewers and to halt other practices such as prostitution and drug use and distribution. They often reported innocent social gatherings to security as "suspect," leading to many detentions. The regular police adamantly refused to recognize and cooperate with the committees on the grounds that members of the popular committees and their patrols were private citizens who had no legal capacity to enforce the law. Local police commanders went further and arrested committee members who harassed other people or who broke the law themselves.

Underscoring the immunity of popular committee members and the legitimacy of their assumption of police powers, the attorney general issued a decree in January 1992 prohibiting police agents from arresting any member of a popular committee under any circumstances without the express authorization of the governor of Khartoum state. If the police deemed the activity of a popular committee member unlawful, the decree required the case to be reported to the governor. The attorney general had his decree posted on bulletin boards in all police stations of the capital for policemen and the public to see.

The next step in this process which marginalized and undermined the regular police was to extend some police powers to a body staffed by the popular committees, a principal objective of the order establishing the People's Police Force.

In September 1992, President Omar Hassan al Bashir issued the Order Establishing the People's Police Force (1992), whose Article 3 states: "A semi-regular force is created and called the `People's Police Force.' It has a special emblem, and is formed from volunteer citizens who are eligible in accordance with the conditions stipulated in the regulations of the People's Police Force."

Article 7, provides: "The People's Police Force supports the police, and practices in the performance of its duties some of the authority and mandate granted to the police in accordance with the provisions of the 1991 law of criminal procedure. These are: a) arrest; b) search of persons and places and the holding of any stolen or suspected property." Article 4 specifies the goals of the force as being: to "assist the police in performing their duties and to mobilize popular energies towards maintaining security and public order, and to improve and rectify society in accordance with religious teachings and the precepts of superior morals." Article 12 of the order, entitled "Duties of People's Police Force volunteers," emphasizes, among other duties, the moral "mission" of a People's Police Force volunteer to "b) observe and uphold in his public conduct religious teachings and the precepts of superior morals" and "c) to behave according to righteous conduct which conforms with the sanctity of the tasks placed upon his shoulders." Since the enactment of this order, tens of thousands of People's Police Force members, both men and women, have been inducted into the force all over Sudan.20

People's Police Force Compared to the Regular Police

The People's Police Force differs from the regular force in a number of ways. First, although the 1992 order does not specify this, it is mainly the popular committees that are empowered to nominate the volunteers of the People's Police Force, while aspirants to join the regular force are still required to undergo a long process of application governed by strict requirements of eligibility, qualifications and fair representation of all major population groups.21 Second, the official discourse refers to the People's Police Force volunteer as al Shurti al Ressali "the policeman with a prophetic mission," while a member of the regular force remains what he has always been: a policeman. Third, an important difference between the two forces is the level of training. Members of the regular police are required to successfully complete six months of training at the police academy. People's Police Force members have only two months of training, with classes in basic law and physical exercises, during which they also receive intensive spiritual guidance. As if to symbolize this hybrid nature of the People's Police Force, its members wear a khaki uniform which is identical to that of the regular police force, but is distinguishable from it by a white badge that covers the shoulder and upper arm.

The female agents of the People's Police Force go by the evocative name of murabitat or "entrenched defenders of a besieged place." The murabitat are in particular responsible for enforcing women's compliance with a dress and conduct code.

DEPLOYMENT OF COMPREHENSIVE SECURITY POLICE

Starting in 1993, the government introduced a police plan purportedly aimed at the improvement of neighborhood policing. The Deployment of Comprehensive Security is a program that deploys policemen in each of the residential quarters of Khartoum, Omdurman and Khartoum North. The program required popular committees in each neighborhood to raise funds from the residentsto construct a one-or-two room station for the force, while the ministry of interior provided agents' salaries and equipment in the form of a vehicle and a radio link to the headquarters for each station. The population did its part in the program by raising funds and actually constructing the premises for the units.

By the end of 1994, at least 120 police stations sprang up all over the capital.22 People genuinely expected that the presence of this force would deter thieves and reduce insecurity as the government promised. However, lack of resources subjected the unit to rapid wear and tear. Its equipment fell into disrepair and its personnel became demoralized.

Abuses by Deployment of Comprehensive Security Police

Human Rights Watch has a copy of the form entitled "Population Index" that police agents of the Deployment of Comprehensive Security program use to keep the entire population of the capital under their close scrutiny. Under the heading of the ministry of interior, Deployment of Comprehensive Security Project, the form comprises five sections. Information in the first two sections covers the exact location and type of each residence, and whether it was rented or owned by the occupants. Section three requires information on commercial locations, and the home addresses of business owners. The main table in the form requires the listing of members of each family, and the employment, identity, nationality and religion of each, and his or her relationship to the head of the household. The last section is dedicated to notes on changes of ownership, any family members are living abroad, recent deaths in the family, number of cars per household, and domestic help employed.

In displaced camps and suburbs of the capital, agents of the Deployment of Comprehensive Security Police, members of other security agencies who operate out of these stations and members of the local popular committee and affiliated People's Police Force operate together to keep the local population under constant security surveillance. They routinely use beatings to intimidate citizens. They make threatening visits to the homes of individuals who initiate independent community activities, such as evening classes, to coerce them into placing such activity under the umbrella of one of the NIF mass organizations or to abandon it altogether.

The Deployment of Comprehensive Security police stations of Jebel Aulia, where one of the largest displaced camps is located, and Hilat Mayo, one of the largest suburban areas to the south of Khartoum, are becoming notorious for such abuses. For example, on August 31, 1995, the People's Police patrolling theMayo suburb shot and killed forty-five years old Ahmad Muslim, a Nuba resident who at the time of the shooting was riding his bicycle. The family lodged a complaint about his death and was told that the deceased did not stop when the patrol ordered him to.23

ABUSES BY NIF MASS ORGANIZATIONS AND NEIGHBORHOOD GROUPS

Chapter VII refers to the authorities' call on armed NIF party militia to maintain order in the capital during the September 1995 student demonstrations. This deployment of armed NIF mass organizations, such as Youth of the Home Land and the Organization for the Defense of Faith and the Home Land, received the sanction of the head of state who exhorted them to physically confront government opponents in the streets after various police and neighborhood surveillance mechanisms failed to predict and contain the September 1995 street demonstrations.

The call on armed civilian groups to disperse crowds, guard road blocks, guard public buildings and isolate residential areas from one another revealed the existence of this hidden parallel militia, governed by no law other than the imperative of political survival and formally accountable to no government agency for its conduct. This gives cause for concern about the lack of accountability and the potential for violence that the use of such party militia invites.

Neighborhood patrolling by civilian groups affiliated with or appointed by the NIF-dominated government continues. Inhabitants of both shantytowns and the affluent neighborhoods in the capital are daily faced with armed civilians patrolling the streets. During 1993-94, the government-appointed popular committee of Manshiya Quarter ran a patrol which stalked clients of local brewers to arrest and humiliate them.

A killing occurred in late March 1995 in block number seven of Riyadh residential area of eastern Khartoum council by patrol members appointed by the popular committee, which had introduced armed street patrols in early 1995 under the command of a member of the committee, purportedly to deter night thefts. The patrol however imposed a virtual curfew on the neighborhood and required night workers to carry special permits that it issued. Late in the night of Friday, March 24, members of the patrol shot at a crowd of angry southern citizens who were protesting in front of the local police post about the injury of a member of the group in an earlier shooting by a police agent. Sayda Mohamed Kwual, a displacedsoutherner and mother of two children, was killed by a shot fired by an unidentified member of the patrol. Despite the presence of a dozen eyewitnesses, the official police investigation avoided questioning members of the patrol, who were all civilians, and focused on the responsibility of the Deployment of Comprehensive Security police force stationed in the neighborhood.24

ABUSES BY THE CENTRAL RESERVE FORCE AND OTHER UNITS OF THE REGULAR POLICE

Finally, the Central Reserve Force of the regular police (the riot police) has used excessive force against unarmed civilians in a number of incidents, leading to deaths and injuries among protesters. This most frequently occurred during campaigns for the forcible resettlement of squatters and displaced people in the Khartoum area and during September 1995 street demonstrations described in Chapter VII. Coercion, torture and ill-treatment, notably floggings and beatings, are often used in ordinary criminal cases, particularly to extract confessions or to identify accomplices. This abusive conduct has become so routine that policemen do not conceal it from hundreds of citizens who daily go to police stations for ordinary business.

In February 24, 1994, the independent daily Al Soudani al Doulia ran a story about two incidents of police brutality to which Mirghani Hassan Ali, a regular al Soudani columnist and member of the Transitional National Assembly, was an eyewitness. He called for an official investigation not only of the incidents he cited but of the whole issue of police brutality, as a taboo topic in Sudan. Indeed, this was one of the rare cases in which the issue was raised publicly.25

Such is the degree of official tolerance of police abuses that a prompt response to this call for investigation occurred on the same afternoon the article was published, but it was somewhat different from what the journalist hoped. A security unit raided the editorial offices and the press at which the newspaper was printed, thoroughly searched both places, deliberately damaged some property in the process and arrested a reporter. Two months later, authorities closed down the newspaper altogether and confiscated its property as described below. With otherjournalists, Mirghani Hassan Ali spent some weeks in incommunicado detention; he was also dismissed from the parliament.26

FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND THE PRESS

The government of Sudan told the United Nations in November 1995 that "freedom of expression has been guaranteed by the Press and Printed Materials Law . . . . Consequently, there are many daily newspapers where opinions, different from those of the Government, are freely expressed."1 Freedom of expression and the press, however, in fact continues to be limited, in violation of international standards. A statement by President al Bashir is more revealing of the government's position: "Press freedom must be kept within certain limits, because a madman whose profession is journalism could destroy all of society with his madness, in the form of comments and opinions."2

Although a few independent newspapers were allowed to open under the 1993 press law, several were later closed, their presses confiscated, and their owners and journalists arrested. In other cases, newspapers have been closed for several weeks after they published articles critical of the government. Several newspapers, including those formerly associated with political parties, have remained banned since 1989. These restrictions on the press in Sudan go far beyond what is permissible under the free expression guarantees in Article 19 of the ICCPR.

The Applicable Law

The ICCPR protects freedom of speech. Its Article 19 provides:

1. Everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference.

2. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.

No restrictions are permitted on the "right to hold opinions without interference," Article 19 (1). Therefore, when the military junta that took power in Chile in 1993 limited free expression pursuant to a state of emergency, a member of the U.N. Human Rights Committee stated that

freedom of opinion could not be restricted merely because the government considered it to be a threat to its own stability. . . . Any restriction on freedom of opinion required convincing proof that a clear and present danger could not otherwise be overcome.3

Authorities have concluded, "Peaceful criticism of governmental policies could never amount to such a threat."4

The possible limitations on free expression under Article 19 (2) are described in Article 19 (3)5 in a three-part test: 1) any restriction must be provided by law; 2) it must serve one of the legitimate purposes expressly enumerated in the ICCPR; and 3) it must be necessary.6 "National security," a commonly cited necessity, permits limitations on freedom of expression required to safeguard limited and legitimate national security, as by preventing publication of military secrets.

The interpretation of Article 19 over the years shows a consensus that peaceful criticism of governmental policies does not amount to a threat to national security. In 1977 the U.N. Human Rights Committee found a clear violation of Article 19 when the Iranian government permitted no discussion whatsoever about the constitution, the imperial monarchy or the "Revolution of the Shah and the

People."7 Thus national security is not identical to and may not be confused with the longevity of a government.

The concept of public order when set forth together with the term ordre public means, in addition to prevention of disorder or crime, the general welfare and even public policy.8 This concept of "public order" does not justify a government in repressing the speech of its critics; it is intended to protect secrets such as in diplomatic affairs, to ban pornographic materials, or to regulate false or misleading expressions about drugs in the interest of public health.9

Under the rubric of public order, some states have guaranteed freedom of expression only to the extent that it was deemed consistent with their philosophies of government; this approach was often used by socialist states. The freedom of expression was apparently guaranteed only if used "in order to strengthen and develop the socialist system," for instance, or as long as it was not exercised contrary to "the interests of the working people."10 These restrictions too have been found to be a violation of Article 19, according to a legal authority:

A state is entitled to defend the political structure enshrined in its constitution against its enemies or even against internal subversive acts, but the Covenant does not permit a state to limit political expression directed toward peaceful political or social change. Expressions of opinion favoring changes in socialism, or even from socialism, may not be limited any more than expressions threatening the stability of the regime (as in the case of Chile), or other expressions not creating a clear and present danger of some evil coming within the purposes contemplated by Article 19 (3).11

Freedom of expression includes the right to receive as well as impart information. (Article 19 (2)). In its case law, the European Court on Human Rights has referred to the special protection to be accorded to the press in this respect. It has found that the public's right to know is an intrinsic aspect of informed political debate crucial to genuine democracy:

Freedom of the press affords the public one of the best means of discovering and forming an opinion of the ideas and attitudes of political leaders. More generally, freedom of political debate is at the very core of the concept of a democratic society . . . .12

Controls Before the 1993 Press Law

Journalists have been under tight scrutiny and control since the coup, when the junta disbanded the independent Sudan Journalists' Union and the Writers' Union along with all other trade and professional unions.13 An estimated 600 journalists found themselves overnight without employment.14 Other dismissals followed: the government dismissed 200 workers from the state-controlled radio and television in 1991 alone.15

An average of twelve to twenty journalists annually were held in incommunicado detention in ghost houses - where many were tortured or mistreated - during the 1989-94 period. Most had been affiliated with political parties banned after the coup, and/or were suspected of involvement in the clandestine press. The authorities clamped down further by conducting warrantless house and office searches of dozens of journalists and free lance writers; in some cases property was confiscated without written order. Journalists were also routinely refused exit visas for travel outside the country. Independent correspondents of regional and international news outlets were harassed in retaliation for critical coverage of the government.16

After the 1989 ban on all publications was in place, the government gradually began approving the licensing, reopening, and publication of select privately-owned newspapers seen as apolitical, primarily the sports and "social"tabloids and cultural and business publications. Newspapers that had been affiliated with political parties have never been permitted to reopen.

The reopened publications remained at the mercy of the executive power, represented by a ministerial committee on the media. Several ministers, as well as the directors of security and military intelligence, were members of this committee, which was created in 1989 in order to "confront the internal [clandestine] and foreign media . . . to counter lies, deceptions and rumors."17 Fifteen of the reopened sports newspapers had their licenses revoked in February 1990 and two social tabloids and two business papers were closed down in May 1990 with no reasons given.18

The 1993 Press and Printed Materials Law

On the first day of the 1989 coup those who took power imposed an outright ban on all nongovernmental publications in Constitutional Decree No. 2: "All licenses and permits issued to nongovernmental journalistic establishments and publications are canceled until a new license is issued by an authoritative organization."19 This brought to an abrupt halt the forty daily newspapers and additional weekly "social" (gossip) magazines and sports publications of the popular tabloid genre that prospered during the multi-party government of 1985 to 1989. The only newspaper left open was the armed forces' paper. This ended free expression in Sudan.

President (Lt. Gen.) Omar Hassan al Bashir declared in July 1989 that the press soon would be allowed to reopen, in accordance with a new law that would weed out "mercenary journalism," but in February 1990 the government decreed that publication of newspapers would be the monopoly of two state-owned publishing and printing houses. The media, all under government control, henceforth concentrated on the task of creating an Islamic (and Arab) Sudan, in line with the vision of the ruling NIF. The Ministry of Information publicly stated that ideological commitment was a requirement for serving in the media.20

The Criminal Act of 1991 contained at least two articles affecting free expression: Article 66 made it a criminal offense to publish "any news item, rumor or report knowing that the same is incorrect, intending thereby to cause apprehension or panic to the public or threat to the public peace or diminution of the prestige of the State. . . ." While prohibitions on knowingly publishing falseinformation are not objectionable, making illegal a publication which intends to diminish "the prestige of the State" is susceptible of political misuse. The "prestige of the State" is too often confused with the prestige of the ruling party or elite.

A second article in the Criminal Act of 1991, Article 64, makes it a crime to provoke hatred "against any sect or between sects by reason of ethnic, color, or language differences."

In July 1993 a press law was enacted that the government said was meant to allow the publication of independent newspapers. The government, in its submission in November 1995 to the United Nations, stated that

as of 28 January 1994, the government has relinquished all control of the papers and [their] publishing houses, allowing them to compete as private entities with other privately owned publications. Already three new newspapers have emerged to compete with the privatized companies.21

Contrary to what this suggests, however, the government maintains a high degree of control on the press owners, publishers, editors, journalists, and the content of publications.

The government's promise in July 1993 to privatize the government-owned newspapers22 remains to be fulfilled. The government still owns three main Arabic-language dailies, Al Inghaz al Watani (National Salvation), Al Sudan al Hadith (Modern Sudan), and Al Gwat al Mussalaha (The Armed Forces). It also owns two English-language publications, the daily New Horizon and the monthly Sudanow, and the Sudan News Agency (SUNA), which publishes in Arabic and English daily news bulletins of national and international news as well as weekly and monthly news summaries, specialized news reports, and documents in both languages. The Ministry of Information owns all radio and television outlets.23

The Press and Printed Materials Law of 1993 provides in Article 20 for the establishment of a twenty-one-member National Press and Publication Council (al Majlis al Aala li al Sahaafa wa al Matbuuaat) to supervise newspapers and all printed materials; the council is not independent. It is "under the supervision of the head of state" (Article 20-A), who nominates both its members and its chairperson. (Articles 21-1 and 21-2). A general secretariat conducts the day-to-daymanagement of the administrative, financial and technical affairs of the council, and follows up the implementation of its decisions. The secretary general of this executive body is an appointee of the head of state and reports to the council. (Article 25-1).

The powers and mandate of the council under Article 24 (1) include

a) drawing general policies in the field of press and publications, while seeing to it that social, family, party and sectarian entities do not control any press establishment. . . .

c) granting of licenses for the publication of newspapers and printed matters and the establishment of press houses, news agencies, press services bureaus, and binderies, [which licenses must be renewed annually in accordance with Article 33] . . . .

j) maintenance of a register of journalists, and establishment of a commission to register journalists and to provide them with the press card which is required for practicing journalism.

The 1993 Press and Printed Materials Law contains provisions formulated in broad terms that the council can invoke to censor journalism critical of human rights abuses. Chapter 6 of the Law, entitled "Cases of prohibition of publication and Observance of Professional Ethics," prohibits the publication of information critical of the armed forces that may demoralize those forces. (Article 29-1 (h)). It prohibits publication of information that can harm national security, as may be determined by the relevant security apparatus. (Article 29-1 (b)).24 Failure to abide by these rules is punishable by a maximum of two years of imprisonment and/or a fine of Ls. 100,000 (U.S. $189.39). (Article 36-2).

Article 30-1 defines "Duties of the Journalist and Professional Ethics," requiring journalists to abide by the following provisions:

a) seek to realize national goals and call for peace, brotherhood and national unity,

b) not to insult heavenly religions and honorable beliefs;

c) observance of truth and objectivity in dealing with public affairs, through the adoption an approach of honest criticism without personal interest;

d) observance of objectivity in all written and published materials criticizing individuals and public figures;

e) observance of the traditions and ethics of the profession and repudiation of insults of individuals and establishments;

f) not to receive direct or indirect funding from any local or foreign quarters in accordance with guidelines set by the Council.

The lawmakers left to fiscal and corporate provisions the task of further shortening the rope with which the council reins in freedom of expression. Articles 4 and 5 of the 1993 Press and Printed Materials Law limit newspaper ownership and publication to companies or corporations that are not owned by nor own any other persons or entities (they must be stand-alone companies), imposing such restrictions for the first time in Sudan; during the 1986-89 period of multi-party government, any individual, political party or corporation could own a newspaper. Under the 1993 law, companies owning a newspaper or other media outlet must have at least ten individual shareholders and may not be owned by another corporation. No shareholder may own more than 10 percent. Under the 1993 law, each share in a newspaper or publication company should be initially offered for no more than Ls. 100 (U.S. $ 0.19) and the initial minimum capital is to be at least Ls. fifty million (U.S. $94,697), ruling out most small-scale private publications produced in Sudan during the 1986-89 period of free press. In order to be registered, newspapers must disclose sources of funding, the breakdown of ownership of shares, and the "specialization" of the paper.

Muhammad Sa'id Ma'ruf, chairman of the National Press and Publication Council, explained the advantages that the 1993 law introduced by limiting ownership of the press to institutions only:

This was deemed necessary because institutions are more capable of sustaining strong newspapers . . . that are well edited and printed. At the same time it was important to restrict the power of individuals over newspapers, and by extension the power of families, parties and sects. . . . Newspapers articulate and shape public opinion and therefore, if we want a newspaperwhich is conscious of the country's aims, that newspaper has to speak on behalf of the majority . . . .25

The notion that a newspaper has to speak on behalf of the majority is a clear violation of freedom of expression, which was conceived to protect the expression of minority and unpopular views.

Human Rights Watch discussed the restrictions in the 1993 press law with the government. The intent of requiring not less than ten individual shareholders in each corporation and a minimum capitalization of fifty million Sudanese pounds was to combat sectarianism and tribalism, we were told.26 There is, however, no reasonable relationship between the minimum numbers of shareholders and capitalization, and combating sectarianism and tribalism. Those who belong to the larger families, sects, parties and tribes will find these numerical and financial requirements no barrier to publishing highly sectarian and tribal newspapers and articles. The requirements are prohibitive for smaller groups or individuals wishing to publish a newspaper, however, no matter how nonsectarian or non-tribal the newspaper.

The names and addresses of the editor in chief, reporters and printer must be registered with the council, which may refuse without explanation to register anyone. Registration requirements give wide discretion to the council to discipline not only the individuals but also to quash publications whose politics do not conform to the government's line, and its discretion has been exercised for just that purpose.

In September 1995 the council suspended the privately-owned daily Al Rai al Akhar (The Other Viewpoint) for two weeks, purportedly because it failed to nominate an editor-in-chief after its prior editor left the country. Even the government newspaper Al Sudan al Hadith (Modern Sudan) reported that Al Rai was suspended because of its September 18 article urging a referendum on self-determination for southern Sudan.

The private press is extremely vulnerable to official pressure because of the requirement of an initial capitalization of fifty million Sudanese pounds. To meet what would otherwise be impossibly high capital requirements, several private newspapers have arranged with one of the two state-owned publishing houses to appear under their name as holding companies. This arrangement, whiletolerated, is insecure. Should the paper cross the invisible "red line," the government may invoke the letter of the law and close down the offending newspaper, as was done with the weekly Zilal following its third suspension in 1995, apparently because of politically sensitive stories. (See below.)

Another move to control the press through financial requirements was the decision in mid-1995 to require all tabloid papers to publish at least twelve pages instead of four, and to employ a minimum of four reporters full time. The Press and Publication Council justified this by the need to guarantee a minimum of quality reporting in the newspapers. However, the required increase of pages and journalists on the payroll could put several smaller tabloids out of business.

Government-owned newspapers enjoy the regular flow of income from the government and the public sector's large advertising budgets. Private newspapers complain that they do not receive an equitable share of government advertising revenue. With limited possibilities of becoming self-supporting through circulation and private advertising, the private press is at a competitive disadvantage to the government-owned newspapers.

Suspension and Closure of Newspapers and Detention of Their Owners and Journalists

Under the 1993 press law, an independent press was not tolerated, although there was slightly more space to open a private newspaper. The main proponent of press reform within the NIF was Mahjoub Erwa, a journalist since 1974 and a member of the Transitional National Assembly appointed in 1992.27 He believes that the essence of Islam is freedom, justice, equality, and tolerance, and his campaign for press reform has been consistent with this philosophy. He lobbied hard within the ruling circles to draft bills and push the reform press legislation through the TNA. The government came forward with its own less liberal draft and a compromise was reached permitting privately-owned newspapers to operate under certain limitations.

Majoub Erwa was the first to apply for permission under the 1993 press law to print his newspaper, Al Soudani al Doulia (Sudan International), in Sudan. Before the January 1994 date on which the press law became effective, he had printed it in Beirut.

As described in a prior Human Rights Watch report,28 Erwa published his newspaper only a few months before it was closed down permanently by the authorities, after a warning raid and temporary closure. Following critical articles on the government policy on the war in the south, the council found in March 1994 that Al Soudani had violated its charter by "criticizing or undermining the moral strength of government forces."29 Mohamed Said Ma'ruf, chairman of the council, repeatedly reminded journalists of the restrictions in the 1993 law on the discussion of matters related to security, military policy, reputations, ethnic disputes and unity of the country. Other issues covered in Al Soudani often cited as catalysts for its closure included strong criticism of the governor of Kordofan state for alleged corruption, the privatization of Sudatel (the telephone company) at an inexplicably low price, police brutality and cases of torture of political detainees brought to court.

In April 1994, the government permanently closed down Al Soudani al Doulia under the provisions of the state of emergency law - not utilizing the 1993 press law. The newspaper was accused of attempting to destroy the symbols for which the Revolution of National Salvation stands and of seeking "to raise doubts about the purpose and struggle of the armed forces and People's Defense Forces."30

Immediately preceding the shutdown, the newspaper published an article on April 3, 1994, about corruption in government, not naming any names. A man who concluded that the article referred to him shot at the journalist who wrote the article, Mohamed Taha Mohamed Ahmed, a regular columnist in the newspaper. The journalist complained to the police and demanded that they arrest the man, the son of a powerful political and religious leader close to the government. Instead, Taha was arrested. According to Erwa, Attorney General Shiddu arrived at the scene and tried to work out a compromise whereby Taha would not be arrested if he agreed not to press charges against the gunman. Taha refused. Three other journalists from Al Soudani were arrested; the four journalists were released after two weeks.31

Majoub Erwa, who said he was unaware of these events, was returning from a business trip to Saudi Arabia at 1:00 a.m. on April 4, 1994. He was intercepted by the authorities at the airport, presented with an order of confiscation of his newspaper pursuant to the state of emergency law, and with the permission of the speaker of the TNA to waive the immunity from arrest that Mr. Erwa enjoyed as a member of the TNA. He was arrested at the airport and spent three months in the Citibank ghost house, where he was not tortured but saw others who were. He was dismissed from the Assembly but he contends the dismissal was illegal because it was not by the required two-thirds vote.32

In kind of "trial by television," violating fundamental fairness and due process, the government showed Majoub Erwa on television answering questions of interrogators who contrived to convince viewers that hostile foreign powers funded El Soudani, and accused him publicly of a variety of crimes. Erwa later said that the session, which largely went in his favor, was filmed without his knowledge and consent.

No charges were ever brought and he was released from the ghost house without having to sign any document. Protests against his arrest within and outside of Sudan were instrumental in his release. The president issued decree 287 on August 9, 1994, authorizing his release and cessation of any criminal proceedings against him, restoring his rights and ordering the return of his personal belongings as well as compensation for the business property that was confiscated. Although Erwa was to receive financial compensation for the premises, printing press, bank accounts, all computers and other business equipment seized, as of May 1995 he had only received part payment, in land and in money. He disagreed with the government's valuation of the property, which he said was much less than the cost to him. The confiscated property, he was told, was being used by the Student Support Fund, a NIF-controlled agency that regulates the flow of public funds to student associations and activities. It also took over the printing press of Al Soudani as a government donation for its own printing company, run on a commercial basis.33

Other newspapers suspended and/or closed include:

* In February 1995, the council temporarily closed down the two weekly magazines Darfur al Jadidah (New Darfur) and Zilal (Shadows). Theowners of Darfur al Jadidah are believed to be closely associated with the ruling NIF, but published an article by a retired army officer criticizing the government. Zilal, which existed prior to the 1989 coup, has a sophisticated cultural and artistic content and contradicts the official line in the arts and culture. Zilal published an interview with Brig. Faisal Medani Mukhtar, a former member of the Revolutionary Command Council who resigned his post before the RCC was dissolved in 1993. In the interview this former health minister criticized the lack of hospital supplies, government policies and the influence of the NIF.34

* The official Press and Publication Council jealously guards Sudan against press comments viewed as harmful to its foreign relations. Darfur al Jadidah was closed for two weeks in April 1994 for allegedly criticizing a foreign head of state, King Hassan II of Morocco. The progovernment youth publication Al Massira (The Procession) was permanently shut down by the council in 1994 for alleging that international terrorist Carlos the Jackal was originally sent to Sudan by Jordanian secret services to embarrass Sudan. It also reported on the arrest of Mahjoub Erwa, publisher of Al Soudani al Doulia.35

* In June 1994, security forces raided and closed down the Khartoum offices of the independent daily Al Khartoum, published in Cairo.36 Mohamed Abdel Seed, the local correspondent of Al Khartoum, was severely beaten and held by security for more than four months. He had been detained in 1993 when he was the local correspondent of the Saudi international daily Al Sharq al Awsat. Authorities took various legal and administrative measures against six other journalists who worked for Al Khartoum, including the confiscation of their press cards, thus barring them from practicing journalism.37

* The aspiration of some social and sports tabloids to report and comment on "serious" political and economic events, and even to participate in an ongoing doctrinal discussion on what constitutes "true Islam," has invited the wrath of the Press and Publication Council. The council has a record of citing "ethical" arguments (the protection of public morality), however, in its public statements about suspensions and closures, as the troubles of the ill-fated Akhir Khabar (Latest News) demonstrate. In June 1995, the independent Akhir Khabar published an editorial highly critical of the 1993 press law which, publisher and editor-in-chief Nazar Awad Abdul Magid said, threatened small independent papers like his with extinction. This editorial followed the publication, in May 1995, of an interview with Mahjoub Erwa about his arrest and the confiscation of his newspaper Al Soudani. However, when the Press and Publications Council ordered Akhir Khabar off the streets for two weeks in July 1995, it publicly warned the tabloid that its coverage of the story of a woman baring herself in Khartoum street corners was too sensational and violated Sudan's Islamic morals. The council stated, "Such news is read by decent Sudanese families who would consider publication of such a story an indication of decline of the Sudanese press."38 On January 18, 1996, the council ordered its permanent closure, accusing it of publishing articles it said "incited animosity, social disintegration and a spirit of intolerance."39 The council also had warned the newspaper about two statements containing crude sexual puns. Its publisher Nazar Awad Abdul Magid said the real reason the paper was closed was because it had announced that it intended to publish a serialized interview with former Prime Minister Sadiq al Mahdi.40 The council at the same time decided to bar Sabah Al Kheir (Good Morning), a tabloid that Abdul Magid's publishing house announced it intended to publish - but had not yet seen the light of day. This was an unprecedented step.

* Even when tabloids stick to trivia and sensational stories, the Press and Publication Council can still step in. In June 1995, the council withdrew the licenses of Al Kura (Football) and Zilal, saying that it had given them an adequate time, two months, to defend themselves against charges thatthey did not meet the ownership requirements. Zilal had been closed a number of times, the last in April 1995 when it and Al Kura were temporarily closed for carrying the story of a faith healer who was subsequently imprisoned and publicly flogged for deception and causing public disorder.41

Both journals had been publishing with the government's permission before the enactment of the 1993 law; after it came into effect, the council agreed to a request by Sudan House for Printing and Publishing, one of two state-owned presses, to publish both journals in its own name. The council then reversed its decision on the grounds that " it was discovered that the relationship between the publishing house and the newspapers was not one of ownership - namely, that the two newspapers had now become the property of the publishing house - but rather one of production. In other words, the two newspapers were being published in the name of the same licensed owners as before, that is before the law came into force. . . . This is a dangerous violation of the law and a punishable offence."42

The government-owned publishing house stopped publishing the newspapers when it learned that their licenses were withdrawn. Zilal and Al Kura finally were allowed to reopen in September 1995 under new arrangements.

Other closures for reasons that the statements of the council define only in broad moral and "national interest" terms include banning the social tabloid Azizati (My Dear) in June 1995, alleging infringement of unspecified regulations, and temporarily suspending three other tabloids, Akhbar al Mujtama (Society News), Al Nujum (The Stars), and Al Kawakib (Constellations).43

The progovernment Khartoum University Student Union (KUSU) publicly threatened the newspaper Al Rai al Ahar (The Other Viewpoint) in July 1995 for publishing a story on a demonstration by some 4,000 university students against the government, according to that newspaper, which published in full the written warning. KUSU warned the news department and the news editor "of the consequences of this," and accused the paper of working against the political stability of Sudan. This was the first such threat against a newspaper since thecurrent government came to power in 1989, according to the paper, which said it was taking the threat seriously.44

Notwithstanding the above, during the March 1996 elections these limits appeared to be slightly relaxed, and the Sudanese press - with the exception of those newspapers already suspended or permanently closed - jumped into the electoral fray with articles harshly criticizing the ruling party. A nominally pro-government paper, Al Sudan al Hadith, even reported the opinions of some who thought the electoral exercise was a waste of time and all candidates were unfit for office.45 This freedom is not considered a right, however, and it remains to be seen if the banned newspapers will be reopened and if this latitude continues after the elections.

Restrictions on Journalists and Writers

Starting in 1995, the Press and Publications Council decreed that all journalists operating in Sudan must be registered with the council and obtain permission to work. Sudanese nationals working as local correspondents of foreign news outlets and foreign journalists on assignment in Sudan are required to register with the council before beginning their coverage and often were denied accreditation and entry to Sudan, or suffered detention, and sometimes beatings, when the government deemed their coverage critical. Those working without registration face imprisonment for up to a month, and a fine of Ls. 500,000 (U.S. $ 947) - in a country where the average salary of a journalist is about Ls. 15,000 (U.S. $28.41) a month. In August 1995, a spokesman for the Journalists Committee, which is linked to the council, said that members of his committee plan to make unannounced visits to newspaper offices to identify journalists working without certification from the council.46

Up to that date the council had accredited 596 journalists, some of whom had to sit for an exam in basic linguistic and reporting skills. The licensing applications of thirty-seven journalists were rejected on the grounds that they wereinexperienced; some of them alleged the rejection was politically motivated since they had worked as journalists for more than a decade and used to report for newspapers linked to political parties, all of which were banned in 1989. Some of the rejects said they were graduates of journalism schools or had other advanced degrees. They were given a second chance in an examination in mid-July 1995, but only nineteen of the thirty-seven passed the exam, which they said tested their knowledge of the achievements of the al Bashir government.47

The highly publicized detention and ill-treatment, in December 1994, of lawyer Mustafa Abdel Gadir was thought to be related to a series of historical articles he had published since October 1994 in the independent daily Akhbar al Youm (Today's News). The articles explained the dynamics that led to the 1985 popular uprising that toppled a military government, which, like the junta that seized power in 1989, was a close ally of the NIF.

Ali Mahmoud Hassanien, another advocate arrested at the same time as Abdel Gadir, expressed pro-democracy views in an interview in Zilal a few weeks prior to his December 1994 arrest. Both lawyers had infuriated the authorities in 1994 by the role they took in leading a twenty-five-strong team of advocates who defended the accused in the 1994 Explosives Trial. (See Chapter V).

The Arrest of Sadiq al Mahdi and Free Speech in Mosques

Although the government has denied it, it appears that the arrest of Sadiq al Mahdi was the result of a homily he gave on the Al Eid religious holiday (Bayram) on May 10, 1995, in his mosque in Omdurman. His arrest was an illustration of the limits on freedom of speech in Sudan in 1995, even if delivered from the pulpit.

The homily was quite critical of the government and particularly the recently-held third conference of the Popular Arab and Islamic Congress, a forum sponsored and paid for by the government. He concluded that this conference did not serve the Islamic cause in the Sudan or in the world, but was a mere waste of public funds, although some leading figures in the Sudanese regime might consider it an effective public relations platform.

Sadiq al Mahdi said it was meaningless to speak of "elections" in the context of the state of emergency, "a sword about the heads of the people of Sudan," and in the absence of basic human rights and an impartial election committee. He then lambasted the National Islamic Front as "a total failure" thathad brought economic development to a halt, was responsible for "unparalleled corruption," and had failed utterly in achieving peace in the country.48

Other criticisms of the government included "misquoting the Qur'an in an apparent disrespect of the Holy Text and interpreting it to serve their earthly political agenda." He concluded, "Transition to democracy in the Sudan is inevitable, all the grounds are already paved for such transition, the only argument amongst national observers is How and When?"49

He was detained by security a week later, on May 16, 1995, and was held in incommunicado detention without charges until his release in late August 1995. He had definitely crossed the "red line."

Attacks on Clandestine Presses, Universities and Other Unauthorized Fora

In addition to the mosque, two other limited venues for the expression of opinion opposed to the government were left after the coup: underground newspapers and university campuses. Some banned political parties continued the clandestine publication of their newspapers on a more or less regular basis. The clandestine opposition press has included Al Maidan (The Field, published by the SCP), Al Shabiba (Youth, by the banned Sudan Youth Union, an affiliate of the SCP), Al Hadaf (The Goal, by the Arab Ba'athist Party), Sawt al Umma (Voice of the Nation, by the Umma Party), and Al Tajam'u (The Alliance), irregularly published by the clandestine National Democratic Alliance.

In November 1994 four Umma Party leaders were arrested and questioned about the editing and location of the party's Sawt al Umma.50 In April 1995 security agents raided the Khartoum home of Abdula Rahim Min Allah, believing he was in charge of typing and coordinating the distribution of Al Maidan, but failed to link him to it. Min Allah was only released during the general releases of August 1995. Authorities confiscated two personal computers during the house raid and tried to read the contents on the hard drive. They did not return the equipment to him at his release, in yet another glaring example of unauthorized confiscation of valuables belonging to security detainees.51

In parallel with their clamp-down on the underground opposition papers and leaflets, security agencies persistently attempt to silence the independent fora where free speech is still practiced, namely in some university campuses. Thestudent movement jealously guards its tradition of free expression of a wide range of opinions within the imperfect sanctuary of university campuses. Student "weeks of cultural activities," posters, "discussion corners," public rallies and mural newspapers offer free outlets to a variety of student political groups. The polarization of student politics continued between the NIF supporters within the student movement and other student groups opposed to the NIF-controlled government.

The violent student clashes that occurred in Ahliya University of Omdurman in November 1995 followed a public rally organized by anti-government students on Saturday, November 25.52 Abel Alier, a former judge and prominent southern politician, and Osman Omar Al Sharif, an attorney general during the period of multiparty government (1986-89) spoke about the war problem in southern Sudan, with the former advocating self-determination for southerners. Progovernment students did not approve of this approach to the southern problem, because in their view and that of the government the southern conflict is a true jihad, a holy war. Their displeasure irrupted on the morning of the next day and by November 28 many anti-government students were injured, and at least one hundred were arrested.53

Gezeira University was a fortress of free expression, militant student associations and a faculty jealous of its academic and political freedoms in the late 1980s. Authorities systematically cracked down on both faculty and students there to break these traditions and bring this institution in line after the coup, as they did at many universities. During the tenure of Professor Tigani Hassan as vice chancellor of Gezira University, particularly during 1991, the university undertook a campaign of politically-motivated dismissals of faculty members. In 1995, Professor Tigani explained the philosophy that guided his actions at the time. He admitted that he had conducted staff purges and said that he "cleansed the Gezira University . . . because in the political context of the time, the political framework and general climate required surgical operations to eliminate corruption and opposition. I was faced as new vice chancellor with clear opposition to me and the current political order. It was an ugly and open opposition, and I represented a new order that aims to achieve change and stability. In a `tit for tat,' it was necessary to apply the law of the jungle that the communists use in dealing with the new regime so it was necessary to uproot them."54

He also admitted that he applied "many steps" to eliminate those who "oppose the revolution." Sixteen staff members were dismissed from Gezeira University by the last quarter of 1992.55

Others, not associated with underground publications and universities, have tried to express their opinions in leaflets, with little luck. One group of thirty-seven people was arrested in Damazien in December 1994 and held for one month apparently for giving out leaflets (munshur, without their names on them) urging voters to boycott the 1995 elections. None was charged with a crime. This group was openly questioning the legitimacy of the elections to municipal council, the economic policies of the government, and official corruption. They spent one month in an unofficial house of detention where some were tortured.56

Access to Foreign News and Fax Machines

The right to receive information and ideas is an important aspect of freedom of expression under Article 19 (2). That right is stymied by security's censorship office with the innocuous name of the Import and Export Bureau, which is in charge of inspecting incoming regional and international newspapers, magazines, and books. Reporting deemed critical of the government may lead to excision of an article from a magazine before it is authorized for distribution, but in many cases, publications and books have been banned from distribution altogether. The same censorship office is in charge of inspecting incoming and outgoing mail. Customs department officials at airports and entry points to the country also are instructed to inspect all printed materials and video and audio cassettes for subversive content, political or moral.

To catch those publications that may have eluded the censor's grasp, security agents raided many private homes and offices in the capital in July 1995 in search of press clippings and opposition literature believed to be sent from abroad to activists who would then disseminate the information. Authorities were highly suspicious of fax machines. They confiscated several fax machines, and at least one person, Sid Ahmad Abdalla Akode, was detained for the ownership of a fax machine.57

The government has said, "As for the Licensing of fax machines . . . using a fax machine would need the availability of a telephone line and to get suchservice, one would need to consult the Government agency concerned which is the Ministry of Telecommunications."58 This statement, however, creates the misleading impression that the government's role is a passive one, of "consultation" only over available phone lines. It omits to disclose that the government must consent to the licensing of a fax; the owner of a fax does not have a right to use it without government approval.

Ownership of faxes requires approval from the ministry of commerce, a license from the department of telecommunications and clearance from the security forces. This goes far beyond mere "consultation" and is a sharp limitation on the "freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers" set forth in Article 19 (2).

Lack of Remedy for Unauthorized Confiscation of Printed Materials

Even when the government admits a wrongful confiscation of books, no remedy is available. Osman Iddris Fadul Allah, owner of the now-closed publishing and book distribution house Dar El Wae'i (Home of Enlightenment), complained on July 10, 1994, to the Complaints Chamber that security agents confiscated imported books valued at $128,000 in a 1989 raid.59 He complained in a letter to security that agents repeatedly beat him and threatened him with "disappearance" whenever he attempted to retrieve his books.60

He said he suffered serious injuries and disabilities due to these beatings. The books were confiscated, he was told, because they were considered unsuitable for distribution to the public after the advent of the national salvation government because of alleged communist content. Following this July 1994 complaint, the internal security division of the security apparatus formed an investigation committee which met with Osman Iddris Fadul Allah several times. He was informed verbally of the findings of the commission: no official authority had decided to confiscate the property of his publishing house, and what occurred was unlawful, excessive and offensive behavior. He was also verbally informed that the state was responsible for any damages resulting from the loss of the property. Asof June 1995, however, Osman Iddris Fadul Allah had received no compensation of any kind.61

FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION

Immediately after the June 1989 coup, the junta issued Constitutional Decree No. 2 banning free association. This decree stated that "all political parties and groups are to be disbanded, and it is illegal for them to be established or to remain active." Seven years later, the ban on political parties remains intact.

The 1989 decree also banned all trade unions and federations and confiscated their funds and properties, and canceled all licenses issued to non-religious institutions and societies.

Some associations have been permitted to reconstitute themselves under post-1989 laws, but their independence is severely limited and their freedom restricted by the "red line."

The Applicable Law

Article 22 (1) of the ICCPR states:

Everyone shall have the right to freedom of association with others, including the right to form and join trade unions for the protection of his interests.62

This right includes the right to join together with others for social, cultural, economic or political purposes. It includes association with only one other person as well as with groups, permanent and temporary associations, and organized or casual associations.63

The limits on the right to association appear in Article 22 (2): restrictions must be prescribed by law and "necessary in a democratic society," and "in the interests of national security or public safety, public order (ordre public), the protection of the public health or morals or the protection of the rights and freedoms of others."

The right to freedom of association protects the right to associate in political parties. A ban on political parties is scarcely "necessary in a democratic society" since historically the development of democracy has been inextricably linked to political parties contesting power through free and fair elections in an atmosphere of free speech and assembly. This is true in Sudan as well as in other countries. Historians have noted that

in terms of political culture, the Sudanese have ranked among the most democratic in the Arab world and Africa. . . . Multiparty elections in the Sudan have always been open and fair in comparison with other Arab or Africa states. Such is the belief in free association that elections in 1986 were contested by an astonishing 42 parties and groupings, and there were at least as many nongovernment newspapers and journals.64

The right to free association imposes on governments the obligation to permit and guarantee organization of all political parties, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, interpreting the free association provision in the American Convention on Human Rights.65 The commission stated that governments have

the obligation to permit and guarantee: the organization of all political parties and other associations, unless they are constituted to violate human rights; open debate of the principal theses of socioeconomic development; the celebration of general and free elections with all the necessary guarantees so that the results represent the popular will.66

The right to organize political parties is also derived from the right to participate in government and to free elections, recognized in Article 25 of the ICCPR.67

The right to form and join trade unions is specifically protected in Article 22 (1). The U.N. Human Rights Committee noted specifically that the fact that a trade union did not share the political views of the government was not a legitimate ground for its dissolution.68 The right to form trade unions is also protected in Article 8 of the Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights69 and several conventions of the International Labor Organization to which Sudan is a party.

Derogation from (or suspension of) the right to freedom of association and some other rights is permissible under circumstances set forth in Article 4 of the ICCPR:

1. In time of public emergency which threatens the life of the nation and the existence of which is officially proclaimed, the States Parties to the present Covenant may take measures derogating from their obligations under the present Covenant to the extent strictly required by the exigencies of the situation, provided that such measures are not inconsistent with their other obligations under international law and do not involve discrimination solely on the ground of race, color, sex, language, religion or social origin. . . .

3. Any State Party to the present Covenant availing itself of the right of derogation shall immediately inform the other States Parties to the present Covenant, through the intermediary of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, of the provisions fromwhich it has derogated and of the reasons by which it was actuated. A further communication shall be made, through the same intermediary, on the date on which it terminates such derogation.

War is not the only public emergency contemplated by Article 4 (1) of the ICCPR. But the view is that the public emergency should be of such a magnitude as to threaten the life of the nation as a whole, whose seriousness is beyond doubt and which constitutes a major threat to the nation.70 The measures which are adopted derogating from obligations under the ICCPR are permissible only to the extent that they are strictly required by the emergency.71

The state party exercising its right of derogation must "immediately inform" the other state parties of the provisions of the ICCPR from which it has derogated, and of the reasons by which it was actuated. This provision "plainly calls for notice to be dispatched almost simultaneously with the proclamation of the emergency or the taking of derogating measures."72

The Government's Derogation from the Right to Freedom of Association

The government has not observed the required procedures for derogation from the Article 22 right to freedom of association. It notified the United Nations Treaty Office on February 14, 1992, pursuant to Article 4 of the ICCPR, that it was derogating from Article 22 (1).73 An initial filing made on December 1991, dated August 21, 1991, failed to specify from which articles the government was derogating.74 The government of Sudan failed to meet the requirement that the notice of derogation be timely given; its declaration of a state of emergency was June 30, 1989, almost eighteen months before the notice of derogation reached the proper authority.

The government's derogation statement does not disclose what, if any, relation political parties, trade unions, professional and other associations have todo with the declared emergency. In its original August 21, 1991 filing of notice of derogation with the U.N. Treaty Office, the government stated in part:

The reasons for declaring the State of Emergency were very obvious, the [National Salvation] Revolution has in June 1989, inherited a very chaotic Socio-economic and political situation with a civil war raging in the South (the Civil War started in 1983 and since then the State of Emergency was declared), and Lawlessness engulfing the North, and armed-robbery being practiced, in a serious manner, in the west (as a result of the present crisis in Tchad), and also in the east, in addition to possible threats of foreign interventions.75

This does not explain the necessity for the sweeping prohibition on all forms of political parties and the pervasive control of other associations later permitted to open in subsequent years. Nothing in any of the government's filings with the U.N. Treaty Office sheds any light whatsoever on the nexus between the emergency and freedom of association.

Although noting that the prior (elected) government had declared a state of emergency due to civil war, the military junta failed to disclose that under that prior state of emergency, freedom of association was not derogated from in most of the country, and political parties, trade unions, and other associations proliferated. The 1989 state of emergency declared by the junta was aimed at suppressing institutions of civil society that functioned quite apart from the war. The immediate effect and the apparent intention of suspending free association was to freeze all political opposition to the coup d'etat. The June 30, 1989, Constitutional Decree Number 2 declared:

(1) All political parties and groups are to be disbanded, and it is illegal for them to be established or to remain active. . . .

(3) (a) All unions and federations which have been legislated by any law are discontinued until a directive is issued for their reconstitution. . . .

(5) All licenses to non-religious institutions and societies issued by any law are canceled after one month of the date of enactment of this law, unless their license is renewed . . . .

Political Parties

Immediately after the coup of 1989, those who took power not only banned all political parties; they also detained all political party leaders. As the military leader of the coup and later President (Lt. Gen.) Omar al Bashir candidly said in 1995, those in control tried to get the approval of the detained leaders for a ban on political parties:

We initiated the dialogue with the parties' leaderships in the first days when they were detained and told them all: Come, let us agree on how to fulfil the Sudanese people's aspirations for Islamic justice and liberate their land from the squalor of rebellion . . . . Our country has had enough division and infighting, sown by parties and factions which cannot see eye to eye and which have no time for each other. But they refused . . . .76

In a November 1995 human rights statement to the United Nations, the government gave its rationale for the continued ban on political associations, claiming that the continued ban on political parties had unanimous consent:

As for the political parties . . . we once again explain that the political associations [are] regulated by law and that we believe that as long as the regulations allow free expression and full participation of all citizens without discrimination, certain types of associations and organizations, like political parties in the Sudan which are based on religious and family affiliations and which have caused universally acknowledged harm could be prohibited. It is only common sense to try to progress beyond situations that have led to repeated stalemates in the political life and harmed the progress of the country, as well as feeding strife and disharmony. For the same reason not even the opposition iscalling for a return to the discredited party system.The opposition's programme calls for a five-year interim period in which no parties would be allowed to take part in the political life. The present government is only implementing policies which have unanimous backing in principle, and its programme differs from that espoused by the opposition in that it has more popular support. . . . In the end, the people will decide on how they want to run their country by electing the representatives they trust, and such elections have been scheduled for 1996 as we have already explained. . . . 77

The government offered no support for the proposition that its ban on political parties has "unanimous backing in principle." Certainly the two largest parties and vote-getters in Sudan - the Umma Party and the Democratic Unionist Party - are not in agreement in principle or otherwise that they should remain banned. Nor does an opposition - referring to the National Democratic Alliance (NDA)78 - demand for reestablishment of political parties after a five-year transition period qualify as support for the unlimited ban on political parties now imposed by the government, with no end date in sight. In fact, the government has misrepresented the opposition demand. The NDA Charter encourages political parties to be active in political life: it stipulates that during the interim period before elections the parties should deepen their commitment to democracy by reorganizing and restructuring their institutions, hold party conventions (most parties never did this in the 1986-89 period) and conduct elections for local and national party officials.79 The opposition demand therefore does not support the government's rationale for banning political parties.

The government's statement refers to elections in 1996. But for elections to be meaningful, the full range of political and civil rights must be respected and protected by the government. Elections conducted with a blanket ban on politicalparties and with other restrictions on freedoms of association, assembly and speech cannot produce a result that is reflective of informed popular choice.

It appears from the actions and statements of the government that the ban on political parties, unlike the ban on trade unions and other associations, is intended to be permanent, not solely for the duration of the state of emergency. For that additional reason it is a violation of the derogation provisions of the ICCPR.

There is, however, a kernel of truth in the statement that political parties in Sudan have not played the beneficial and essential role expected of them in a democracy. One political analyst bemoaned political parties based on religious sects:

No political regime, whatever its formal structures, can be dignified by the appellation 'democratic' when the life-support system of politics is based on religious sectarianism. The leaders of those sects are, by definition, immune from accountability, holding, as they are, both spiritual and temporal powers. This historic dominance, which Nimeiri's regime, in its early years, has done more than anybody else to dilute, has now resurfaced with vigor.80

The major Islamic sects in northern Sudan - the Ansar, Khatmiyya, Tijaniyyah, and Qadiriyyah - have deep roots in society. The Ansar and the Khatmiyya set up their own political organizations during the nationalist period before independence (1956). The Ansar established the Umma Party, with followers mostly in the central and western regions, and the Khatmiyya founded the National Unionist Party (NUP, with urban electoral support). The NUP merged with the People's Democratic Party (originally an NUP splinter group) against what they considered the overwhelming strength of the "House of Mahdi" to form the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).81

In all parliamentary elections the best performance by any party gained 42 percent of the total vote. Together, these three essentially centrist parties never obtained less than three-fourths of the votes and electoral seats. The remainder has consisted ofseveral regional blocs in the south, east, and far west and, since the 1960s, the more radical elements of the political spectrum such as the communists and assorted socialists on the left and the Muslim Brotherhood - as the Islamic Charter Front and now as the National Islamic Front (NIF) - on the right. It is noteworthy that southern parties have never managed to organize effectively throughout the south.82

There were problems with some of the political parties that went beyond their sectarian or regional bases. The historian cited above comments that the problem with parliamentary democracy in Sudan was that every coalition government had a senior and a junior partner and the junior partner soon was approached by the opposition with proposals for a better portfolio, which lead to a vote of confidence and the government falling. Coalition politics deteriorated "into a game of musical chairs and, indeed, during the first six years of democratic rule every possible combination of centrist parties has been in power and each single party has been in opposition."83 Various junior partners entered coalition governments apparently with the interest of undermining their senior partner while in office.

Precisely because smaller groupings have limited appeal, their calculations have been to discredit all rivals so that in due time the body politic would eventually look to their group as the last best hope. Perhaps even more disastrous for public policy, it appears that an overwhelming proportion of political energy expended in the capital has gone toward undermining or shoring up a coalition and deterrence of such activities, with the result that little attention has been given to, and little energy left for, the major national problems of economics, regional rebellion, and societal transformation.84

Political parties were discredited in Sudan, although perhaps not among the followers of the largest parties, who after all make up the majority of the electorate. The alternative to political parties, however, has been behind-the-scenes single party rule, with no real mechanism for a transfer of power. This cure for thedisease of political party ineffectiveness is not unique but - since the fall of the Berlin Wall - is definitely dated.

Narrowly tailored laws designed to protect public order or the rights and freedoms of others - for examples, anti-corruption measures - would not necessarily violate Article 22. Complete prohibition of political parties is a violation of the right to freedom of association.

Trade Unions and Professional Associations

The derogation of freedom of association was specifically aimed at political parties, but also included other associations. From its first day in power, the NIF's national salvation government cracked down on trade unions and their leaders and activists, intending to cripple the union movement and to curtail its historic role as an agent of political mobilization and change. Following the banning of unions and confiscation of their assets,85 the new government dismissed hundreds of union leaders from the public sector and ordered the detention without charge or trial of hundreds of activists who in September 1989 began to strike in opposition to the military coup. These union activists were systematically tortured in detention in the ghost houses, introduced in the last quarter of 1989 in large part to rein in unions.

The government coupled the legal measures that it took against trade unions by exceptionally symbolic decisions, as if to signal to all concerned the real change underway. The Bar Association and the Sudan Human Rights Organization were housed in a building the transitional government (1985-86) donated to them as a gesture of recognition and support. The national salvation government decided to use the property, which it confiscated, as a ghost house in 1989-90.86 Among those brought there for interrogation and torture were the very activists who worked with these two organizations and established their record of advocacy for the rule of law and defense of human rights in the Sudan.87 Both organizationsremain banned. They were replaced by the pro-government Sudan Lawyers Union and Sudan Human Rights Organization.

Since the beginning of the union movement during the colonial era, following the struggle for the establishment of the first workers' association in 1947 in Atbara, the union movement became politically active on issues of national interest. It was a major force in the nationalist drive for independence. In the post-independence era, it was in the forefront of the struggle for the restoration of democracy whenever abusive military dictatorships suppressed it. During the October 1964 popular uprising, unions orchestrated a civil disobedience campaign and a general political strike that managed to topple the military dictatorship of Gen. Ibrahim Aboud (1958-1964). Gen. Nimeiri, who led a military coup against the elected government in 1969, was only ousted when the unions combined their efforts again in April 1985, staging a successful and peaceful civil disobedience campaign and leading the population into a general strike that paralyzed the country and rendered it ungovernable until democracy was restored.88

A period of transition followed each of these eruptions of "people's power," during which union representatives and national figures led one-year transitional governments that prepared for elections and the reinstatement of democratically-elected governments. The medium of trade union intervention in national politics was in both cases broad alliances, called in 1964 the Front of Associations (Jabhat al Haya'at) and in 1984-85 the Alliance of Trade Unions (Al Tagam'u al Naghabi). Thus, in recognition of the union's role in bringing about the 1985 political change, the transitional government was headed by Dr. Gezouli Da'Falla, the chairperson of the Doctors' Union and of the underground Alliance of Trade Unions that spearheaded the strike against Nimeiri's military rule. This ensured a particularly harsh clamp down on the Doctor's Union following the June 1989 military coup.

The unions' role during the transitional period and under the democratically-elected government of Sadiq al Mahdi went beyond the defense of the interests of their members to also include direct participation in national affairs on a number of issues. They served as active mediators between the government of Sudan and the rebel SPLM/A in negotiations for an equitable settlement of the civil war. Union representatives and political leaders negotiated the Koka Dam agreement of February 1986, with the SPLM/A.89 Following that initiative, unionmediators negotiated the November 1988 agreement between the SPLM/A and the Democratic Unionist Party, the then junior partner in the coalition government, of which the Umma Party was senior party.90 It is largely accepted by political analysts that the June 30, 1989 coup was timed to stop that government from formally adopting this second agreement, and thus achieving a negotiated end to the war. The agreement almost adopted would have required the freezing of the application of Islamic laws, a measure the National Islamic Front, the political party behind the coup, vehemently opposed.91

This record of activism apparently did not endear trade unions to the NIF-controlled government. The NIF tended to see the unions as dominated by communists, leftists, and secularists. While the NIF has managed to build a constituency in the student population, managing in the process to exert a quasi-control over student unions at the high school and college levels, it has performed less well among workers and professional groups.

In the last week of July 1989, hardly one month after the coup, the banned trade unions took the bold initiative of addressing a memorandum of protest to the government. A delegation of trade unionists, including representatives from the unions of intermediate school teachers, the attorney general's legal advisors, lawyers, bank employees, Khartoum University staff and the federation of civil servants and professionals, requested and immediately obtained an audience with Brig. Hamadien, a political advisor to the ruling Revolutionary Command Council, who was under the impression that the memorandum was one of allegiance to the new military order. The memorandum, instead, reminded the government of its obligations under international conventions to which Sudan remained party with regard to the freedom of association, and the prohibition of persecution of union activists; declared the banning of unions and the confiscation of their assets illegal; demanded the restoration of the banned unions as the legitimate representatives of the workers who elected them; and sought the restoration of their assets.

Upon reading the protest memorandum in the presence of the union representatives, Brig. Hamadien promised them, "We will contact you." Instead, security agents moved the same night to arrest all those who signed thememorandum on behalf of their unions, and sent them directly to Kober Prison in early August.92

The Sudan Doctor's Union organized a strike in November 1989 in protest against the suppression of unions and the detention of its leading members, some of whom were arrested following the submission of the July memorandum.93 Public health services came to a stand still, except for emergencies. The government moved swiftly and ruthlessly. It dismissed leading activists from their posts and ordered the detention of many others. This wave of detainees, unlike the first, was sent to ghost houses. Many doctors were subjected to systematic beatings, torture and humiliating treatment. Security agents pulled out the fingernails of a pediatric surgeon with pliers and flogged other detainees until they bled.

Dr. Ali Fadul, a thirty-seven-year-old physician who was dismissed after the strike, a member of the executive committee of the Doctors' Union and also secretary of the League of Socialist Doctors in Sudan, went underground in fear for his safety. To force him to give himself up, security arrested and tortured his brother, Dr. Mukhtar Fadul, a veterinarian. Dr. Ali Fadul then turned himself in to security on March 13, 1990. He was severely tortured in a ghost house, and he died of internal hemorrhaging and a fractured skull on April 21, while still in the custody of security.94 Dr. Mamoun Mohamed al Hussein, the president of the Doctors' Union, was detained following the November strike and beaten with such violence that he spent three days in a coma. He was later brought before a special security court that sentenced him to death for his role in the strike. For months, he waited in the death row, shackled, wearing the mandatory red uniform and confined to the quarters reserved in Kober for those awaiting the execution. Only a strong local and international campaign for his release managed to save him.95

Government Trade Union Legislation

Two years after the state of emergency was declared in 1989, the government began to issue decrees that would permit the trade unions to reopen, if they reorganized. This involved considerable manipulation of laws, people and elections. The process culminated in 1991 with the introduction of the Law for Labor Organizations. This legislation radically changed the structure and functionsof labor organizations in the country. Prior to it, unions were organized according to trade, economic sector or profession. This allowed the presence of more than one trade union in the same establishment.

The new law allowed only one union per establishment, which union must group together workers who had their own separate unions before that. This requirement diluted the influence of professional organizations, which had a record of pro-democracy activism and whose influence far exceeded their numerical strength. The law allowed the establishment of separate professional unions only as regulatory bodies for the particular profession, to serve as custodian of its norms and ethics.

Article 5 of the 1991 Law for Labor Organizations declares that

Union organizations, being national, democratic, independent and permanent labor organizations shall have the following goals:

a) Defend and protect rights of their members and care for their interests within the limits of the law and the requirement of national action.

b) Improve the intellectual and artistic capacities of the membership and raise their cultural, economic and social levels.

c) Work toward social and economic stability.

d) Cooperate with other organs of the state to consolidate national unity, to salvage the economy and to improve services.

e) Protect the independence of the nation and its security, and strengthen the civilizing orientation and contribute to the realization of justice among members of the society.

f) Consolidate productivity, improve management and deploy sufficient efforts to achieve production surplus within the socio-economic development plans of the state.

An accompanying covering note from the Registrar of Trade Unions explains the underlying philosophy behind these goals. It consists of a flat "rejection of the narrow interpretation . . . which [under past legislation] considered trade unions as primarily bargaining tools, aiming at the achievement of maximum claims and sectoral gains to its membership." Instead, the memorandum explains, the legislators introduced a new understanding of unions "which is more in line with the new situation in our country; requiring union organizations to beinstruments working towards economic and social stability in society."96 One could hardly be more explicit on the limits of advocacy imposed on unions under this new law. The only unions permitted under this law would be held to the government's definition of national interest and its agenda of "civilizing orientation" - commonly used in official discourse to denote the government's strategy of Islamization of Sudanese society - and would not be permitted to pursue their members' economic or political interests.97

Elections for trade union offices have been marred with intimidation tactics and suppression of dissenting voices. The following testimony of a prominent union leader, whom we shall call Ahmed, illustrates the methods used to control unions and union elections and defeat the workers' right to freedom of association.98

Ahmed was detained for seven months in the crackdown on unions that started in September 1989. No charges were ever filed against him, and he was not questioned or tortured. He believes he and many other trade unionists were detained to prevent them from continuing pro-democracy political activism and playing their 1985 role in bringing down a military dictatorship.

Ahmed was detained again in 1991, accused of planning to assassinate government figures, taken to the Citibank ghost house and brutally tortured. He was released three months later without charges ever having been brought.

The third time he was detained, in August 1992, was directly related to his refusal to be a party to government attempts to control the trade unions. The government had issued new decrees for the reorganization of trade unions. A former independent trade unionist, who had agreed to support the government's position, was sent to feel Ahmed out about his participation in trade union elections under the new law. He wanted guarantees that Ahmed's block would vote for the NIF candidate and that the NIF man would be elected.

Ahmed assured the representative that he and his people would participate, but that he and his group would work against the NIF candidate (he proposed another candidate, a moderate Islamist, instead).

Shortly after, Ahmed and another former trade union leader were detained. He was kept in a solitary cell and accused of being a "ringleader" against the government. He was questioned very little, and although he was beaten, the treatment was not as severe as it was the year before.

The union elections took place in his absence and the NIF candidate was elected. When the elections were over, two and a half months after his detention, he was released without any charges. Upon release in 1992, he was required to sign a statement promising that he would not leave Khartoum without security approval.

A government labor official visited him at home, apologized to him, and explained that they had to have their man elected, and Ahmed as a politician should understand this. He worked for another union election, in which he agreed not to stand as a candidate, and his side was elected. He was fired from his job shortly after that. Security continues to visit him every two weeks, and he has been detained several times.99

The government maintains that professional associations are subject to their own administrative regulations.100 But unfair tactics were used to manipulate elections to permit government supporters to take over the Bar Association in 1993.101

Other Nongovernmental Associations

The government of Sudan's severe restrictions on freedom of association go beyond trade unions and political parties. Registration of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) is required by law. A special branch of Sudan Security called Security of Organizations holds veto power on the registration of any nongovernmental organization on the grounds of the supposed political affiliations of its founding members. The founders' home and work addresses must be listed in the application and Security of Organizations must provide clearance prior to approval of NGO registration. The same branch vets the names of applicants for employment with international development agencies operating in Sudan, in many cases barring those suspected of anti-government views or affiliations from these jobs. The branch closely monitors nongovernmental organizations allowed to re-register following the 1989 ban on all associations, and frequently steps in to close down organizations it suspects of harboring opposition members. Using a formidable array of reporting requirements and surveillance of both personnel andproject activities, the government puts pressure on international development organizations that support potentially opposition local organizations.102

Local NGOs already in existence at the time of the coup were rigorously screened, and some were not permitted to re-register. This eliminated independent and membership-elected associations such as the Sudan Human Rights Organization. In a few cases where the government suspected that a re-registered NGO had a leadership that did not agree with the ruling ideology, close security scrutiny was maintained. Official tolerance of such NGOs, viewed as "liberal," "secular," or "leftist," ran its course in several cases, and the NGOs' projects were closed, they were de-registered as organizations, and their assets confiscated.

It also proved extremely difficult for nongovernmental organizations formed after 1989 to obtain the required approvals for registration. Following the coup, new NGOs whose founding members were close to the ruling NIF won immediate approvals, while others without these political connections had to submit to the individual vetting of their founders by a special branch of security.103

Violations of Freedom of Association

Until 1989, the formation and registration of NGOs in Sudan was governed by a 1957 law which provided a broad framework for regulating the structure and functions of voluntary societies, and outlined their accountability to their membership and to a regulatory governmental agency, then the Registrar of Local NGOs at the Ministry of Social Welfare. The law allowed any group of seven persons to form a "charitable society" or organization for "any purpose," provided that the objective was not of an educational, religious or trade union nature, since involvement in these activities was governed by other laws. The legal requirements for the formation of NGOs were made easy by post-independence legislators to deliberately encourage popular participation in welfare and development services that the newly independent Sudan desperately needed.

The Miscellaneous Amendment (Organization of Voluntary Work) Act of 1994 increased the minimum number of people required to found a new NGO from seven to thirty. It also subjected the approval of registration to the prior clearance of Security of Organizations, which has the task of checking the political credentials and background of any persons willing to form a welfare or humanitarian association. This involves routine security checks in the places of work and residence of all founding members. A new NGO could not be registered without this clearance. This discourages the thousands of people who were purgedfrom public service, or formerly detained on the grounds of official suspicions about their affiliations, from involving themselves in any form of association. It constitutes a grave limitation on their freedom of association.

In other cases, Security of Organizations may disapprove of the objectives of a proposed NGO and deny it clearance from the outset. This happened in 1991 and 1992 when a dozen local environmental groups founded the Sudan Environmental Network (SENET) to coordinate their outreach and program work. Authorities harassed leaders of this initiative, detaining some briefly to pressure them to abandon SENET. It appeared SENET was seen as a threat to the government-controlled NGO network, the Sudan Council of Voluntary Agencies (SCOVA). This harassment continues. Leading environmentalist Professor Assim Magrhabi and his wife Dr. Alawiya Gamal were both briefly detained in September 1995, and then told to report to the head office of Sudan Security for long hours on a daily basis after that.104 They were accused of but not charged with "espionage" activities for filming Dinder National Park, a threatened game reserve.

Church activities and all church-based organizations are the object of the specialized scrutiny of a branch of security with the telling name of Church Activities (Al Inshita al Kanassiya). Saint Vincent de Paul, a charity of the Roman Catholic Church of Sudan, runs a breakfast program for more than eighty schools servicing displaced children from southern Sudan in the greater Khartoum area. It also has a street children's program which helps unaccompanied children from the south through an integrated shelter, feeding, foster parenthood and schooling approach. In April 1994 the director of both programs was detained for ten days, together with three Egyptian seminarists who were volunteers in the breakfast program (authorities initially said they were "suspected of espionage"). None was charged with a crime, but the volunteers were expelled. A vehicle they were in at the time of arrest was never returned to the program; nor was a large sum of cash, reportedly the salaries of the breakfast program workers. When the director tried in November to reclaim the assets through official channels, he was arrested again and beaten in reprisal. The Sudan Commissioner of Voluntary Agencies, the official agency overseeing NGOs, stepped in and suspended the registration of Saint Vincent de Paul on the grounds that it had violated regulations in its child residency program. Only intervention at a high level in the Ministry of Social Planning, the body to which SCOVA reports, allowed Saint Vincent de Paul tocontinue functioning, on the grounds that the agency was doing useful work by keeping children off the streets.105

In February 1995, authorities arrested Gordon Micha Kur, a retired policeman and social worker who had a close working relationship with the Sudanese Amputees Association (SSA) during its short existence from 1987 to 1989. He was detained for the first time from September 1989 to June 1991, also without charge or trial. The SSA was a welfare association set up to assist victims of hand and foot amputations following court sentences during the strict application of shari'a laws in Sudan from 1983 to 1985, a punishment the NIF actively backed. The SSA was banned at the time of the coup and not allowed to re-register, and its very mention is considered blasphemous by supporters of the NIF. It is believed that Kur's repeated detentions and the harassment he suffered are related to his involvement with this association.106

RIGHT OF PEACEFUL ASSEMBLY AND THE CONDUCT OF LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS IN CONTROLLING DEMONSTRATIONS

The government of Sudan has stated that freedom of assembly "is fully guaranteed by law and the legal provisions governing it are identical to those applied in western countries."107 When the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights on Sudan observed that the Criminal Act of 1991 declares as unlawful a gathering of more than five persons without prior approval, the government explained that the provision regarding unlawful assembly was originally introduced by the British during colonial rule in the Sudan (although the government has taken pride in distancing itself from the colonial past).108 This government, moreover, radically changed the legal system, including the criminal code. The limiting of freedom of assembly by the new Criminal Act of 1991 is not, therefore, merely a holdover of the colonial past but an assertion of the new government's disregard for international standards in this regard.

At issue in Sudan is both the letter of the law and the way in which it is administered. Unofficial groups not aligned with the government rarely even applyfor permits for meetings indoors or outdoors, because the government will not grant permits to those considered its opponents and violently represses their meetings and demonstrations. As a consequence, outdoor demonstrations are not preannounced in order to avoid government disruption and indoor meetings take place clandestinely to prevent security from observing and arresting the participants. Citizens know where the "red line" is.

The Applicable Law

"The right of peaceful assembly shall be recognized," according to Article 21 of the ICCPR. The only permissible restrictions are those in conformity with law and necessary in a democratic society, including those necessary for public order or ordre public. "The right of assembly is subject only to one condition, that it be exercised peacefully," according to one legal authority.109

Long before the current government of Sudan came to power, it was generally accepted that a state could not restrict peaceful assembly on the grounds of deviance from or opposition to the state ideology. Public order could not be defined as conformity with the state's ideological precepts. This was the interpretation of the law on freedom of assembly,110 and the rule applies universally, whether the ideology is communism, capitalism, theocracy, or the ideology embraced by the current or any prior Sudan government.

Peaceful assembly "refers exclusively to the conditions under which the assembly is held, i.e., `without uproar, disturbance, or the use of arms.'"111 This right includes the right of the individual to participate or not, and the right of groups or organizations to convoke an assembly or take part in it.112 Peaceful assembly includes demonstrations in public places and meetings held indoors.113

Standards in the form of U.N. General Assembly resolutions, such as the U.N. Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials, provide a practical interpretation of the norms laid down in international treaties, such as the ICCPR,and should guide the conduct of law enforcement officials in controlling crowds and demonstrations. Article 3 of that Code of Conduct provides, "Law enforcement officials may use force only when strictly necessary and to the extent required for the performance of their duty."114 The commentary on that article, which forms an integral part of the code, states:

The use of firearms is an extreme measure. . . . In general, firearms should not be used except when a suspected offender offers armed resistance or otherwise jeopardizes the lives of others and less extreme measures are not sufficient to restrain or apprehend the suspected offender. In every instance in which a firearm is discharged, a report should be made promptly to the competent authorities.115

A set of basic principles later clarified these guidelines further, prohibiting use of firearms except in three specific cases: 1) self-defense or defense of others against the imminent threat of death or serious injury; 2) to prevent the perpetration of a particularly serious crime involving grave threat to life; and 3) to arrest a person presenting such a danger and resisting their authority, or to prevent his or her escape.116 Even in such circumstances, these principles permit the use of firearms "only when less extreme means are insufficient to achieve these objectives. In any event, intentional lethal use of firearms may only be made when strictly unavoidable in order to protect life." (Principle 9).

These basic principles impose additional requirements for the use of firearms: prior identification of the law enforcement officer as such, a clear warning of intent to use firearms, and sufficient time for the warning to be observed (unless it would unduly place the officer at risk or risk death or serious harm to others or "would be clearly inappropriate or pointless in the circumstances of the incident"). (Principle 10).

There are also limits on the force that can be used even when law enforcement officials are confronted with an illegal assembly:

13. In the dispersal of assemblies that are unlawful but non-violent, law enforcement officials shall avoid the use of force or, where that is not practicable, shall restrict such force to the minimum extent necessary.

14. In the dispersal of violent assemblies, law enforcement officials may use firearms only when less dangerous means are not practicable and only to the minimum extent necessary. Law enforcement officials shall not use firearms in such cases, except under the conditions stipulated in principle 9.117

Even when use of force and firearms by law enforcement officials may be deemed unavoidable, law enforcement officers must consider some other factors:

Whenever the lawful use of force and firearms is unavoidable, law enforcement officials shall:

a) Exercise restraint in such use and act in proportion to the seriousness of the offense and the legitimate objective to be achieved;

(b) Minimize damage and injury, and respect and preserve human life;

(c) Ensure that assistance and medical aid are rendered to any injured or affected persons at the earliest possible moment;

(d) Ensure that relatives or close friends of the injured or affected person are notified at the earliest possible moment.118

Nor may "[e]xceptional circumstances such as internal political instability or any other public emergency . . . be invoked to justify any departure from these basic principles."119

Relatives of Twenty-Eight Officers Demonstrate

As described above, the government summarily executed twenty-eight army officers on April 24, 1990 because of their alleged participation in a coupattempt that same day. The government announced on television that they had been executed, but never turned the bodies over to the relatives. The relatives formed groups inside and outside Sudan to demand that the details of the trials be made public, and that the government disclose the burial place and permit the families to rebury their loved ones if they wished.

Although civil liberties were suspended at the time of the 1989 coup and in fact have never been fully restored, the relatives of these twenty-eight army officers nevertheless attempt to publicly petition the government inside Sudan. They are among the few who have dared to try to exercise even a few of the liberties all enjoyed - for a few short years - before June 30, 1989. They attempt to exercise their rights to free expression and assembly, to commemorate and protest on or about the anniversary of the deaths. The executions took place on the twenty-eighth day of Ramadan, 1990. Therefore, the day of commemoration falls yearly on a different day of the Christian calendar.

The government has set its face against the relatives' demands. At one time it even tried to prevent them from having private meetings in their own homes to commemorate the executions. These government attempts to prevent private meetings violated the right to peacefully assemble; in addition, the authorities used excessive force in detaining and interrogating those involved.

The families organized the first commemorations in 1991 in the house of Akram al Fatih Youssif, a pilot. Family and friends of the executed officers were present and read poems and speeches eulogizing them. The next day, security called in and threatened the pilot's brother, a lawyer by the name of Eiman al Fatih. The following week, Khartoum University students organized a public rally to protest the executions. Naffissa al Mileik, a well-known professor of education and women's leader, took the podium to denounce the unfair trial of her son, officer Eiman al Mileik. Security took her in for interrogation and threats. Security agents charged into the house of Mohamed Abdel Aziz in Omdurman, where another commemorative event was underway, and arrested all young participants. Security agents severely beat the detainees while in custody, even breaking the jaw of Mohamed Ridda, who had read a poem at the event. At another event organized in al Kadru to eulogize the executed Gen. al Kadro, security agents arrested all participants and detained some for up to a week. In 1992, security agents dispersed a similar gathering convened in al Amarat residential quarter of Khartoum.120

It was the 1993 demonstration that the families staged in front of U.N. headquarters in Khartoum that gave their grief and protest an international resonance. Gaspar Biro, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights' specialrapporteur on human rights in Sudan, heard the demonstration and came out of the U.N. office to receive a memorandum the families prepared for him. In front of his eyes, security agents beat up the peaceful demonstrators and arrested several women, throwing them into minitrucks.121

These women were within their rights to gather and present a petition to a public official. Their assembly was not violent. Preventing that meeting by detaining the demonstrators was an abuse of their human rights. The beating of demonstrators exceeded the minimum amount of force necessary to disperse an unlawful demonstration - and was further unjustified since the demonstration was lawful under international law.

In 1995, the anniversary of the execution fell on February 28, but the relatives decided to memorialize it on February 26 to avoid security harassment.122 The force used by the authorities against the demonstrators was excessive, since by all accounts the women abandoned the demonstration when security appeared on the scene. What followed were beatings of women apparently inflicted as punishment for having held the demonstration. These beatings were not necessary to stop the demonstration, since the demonstrators had already scattered. Nor was there any justification for security's beating of women demonstrators in custody during interrogation.

On the day in question, a group of women and children gathered on University Street near the Palace of Government in Khartoum and pulled out placards with pictures of the executed men. Chanting the names of the twenty-eight victims, the women stopped cars on the street and handed out pamphlets with photographs of the executed men. They succeeded in closing the street briefly; they said the people in cars were kind but afraid to get out and join the demonstration. Symbolic coffins draped with the Sudanese flag were part of the demonstration.123

After a half hour at the most, security arrived to break up the demonstration. The women, who had agreed to flee when security came, did not all succeed in escaping. Six were caught. Many security cars arrived from all directions at once. Security, grabbing the pamphlets and placards, captured Samira Karrar, whom they regarded as the leader, along with her sisters Alia and Widat and three other women.

Although Samira Karrar, sister of a slain officer, has been detained often by security for her participation in these commemorations, the 1995 detention marked the first time she and the others were severely physically abused by security. Security agents pulled her by her hair and knocked her head against a wall. They threw her and the other women inside a white Toyota vehicle of the kind used by security, and took them all to what appeared to be a private house in Khartoum North.124

According to her account, when agents roughly pulled them from the vehicle, she fell on the ground and the agents pulled her up by her skirt. Inside the house they slapped and kicked her; twelve agents were gathered around, some threatening her with death. One roughly grabbed her by the neck, where she was bruised for days afterward. Some took off their belts and struck her. She remained defiant. When they threatened to put her in jail with prostitutes and alcohol brewers, she said she would teach them how to work against the government - which caused another slap.125

One other woman, a diabetic, suffered a bloody nose from the beating. The women were in this unacknowledged place of detention from 10:00 a.m. until 6:00 p.m. the same day, and then were released, after security tried to force them to sign a document agreeing not to demonstrate or take any actions against the government.

The harassment continued; security agents entered a house where Samira Karrar and her sister were visiting and told the owner to throw the two women out. When the women left to avoid problems for their friend, two trucks followed them, one in front and the other behind them, alternatively speeding and braking. a few days later a security agent posing as a "friend" of the women came to another member of the group and sought to entrap her. He said he wanted to work with the families' group against the government and participate with them in assassinations and bombings, offering to supply them with guns and grenades. They firmly told him that they do not engage in such tactics.126

At the 1996 annual commemoration, the government did not repeat the 1995 brutality. The victims' families staged their demonstration in al Jumhuriyya Street, in the commercial center of Khartoum, and temporarily closed the busy street. They carried two large placards and a wreath of flowers. They shouted anti-government slogans and demands for justice for their dead relatives. They also handed out leaflets calling on the government to make public the details of theofficers' trials, to hand over the remains to the families for decent burial, and to make public the names of those who presided over the trials and conducted the executions. Security agents were present but kept their distance.

The hands-off conduct of security during the 1996 demonstration was an improvement over the violence they unleashed on the women during the 1995 demonstration. This did not represent recognition of the right of peaceful assembly, however; before the demonstrations security summoned some family members who had been active in the past and pressured them to sign undertakings not to participate in anti-government activity, including demonstrations.127

Police Violence During Evictions and Demolitions of Squatter Settlements

The police shot dead at least eleven people and injured forty on October 15, 1994, during residents' resistance to the demolition of their homes in a squatter settlement in the Ghammeyer area of Omdurman, also known as Khoder.128 The crowd, also objecting to forced relocation to remote and unserviced areas, threw stones at bulldozers arriving to destroy the homes. In response, the police who escorted the teams fired into the crowd and killed at least six people. At a second protest later the same day five more people were shot dead in the same fashion.129 The residents complained about lack of notice, the destruction without compensation of their homes, and inferior conditions in the relocation sites.

Here, where some demonstrators threw stones at demolition teams, the applicable guideline is Principle 14 of the U.N. Basic Principles on the Use of Force by Law Enforcement Officials, referring to the dispersal of violent assemblies. Police may use firearms only when less dangerous means are not practicable and only to the minimum extent necessary. If they use firearms, they must do so under the conditions stipulated in Principle 9, whereby "intentionallethal use of firearms may only be made when strictly unavoidable in order to protect life."

It is not clear that firing into the crowd was strictly unavoidable in order to protect life. The lives of government officials threatened by rock throwing may have been at stake; if so, less extreme means to preserve lives of officials might well have been employed before the resort to arms. It appears that no lesser measures were, however, employed.

The objective of the government action was to demolish houses. Under Principle 5, whenever the lawful use of force and firearms is unavoidable, law enforcement officials must exercise restraint in such use and act in proportion to the seriousness of the offense and the legitimate objective to be achieved.

The ministry of foreign affairs disputed the number of persons killed - claiming only one died, shot by a demonstrator - and described the killings as a result of legal police response to rioters during the removal of illegal housing. "The incident is normal, legal and usually takes place world-wide and was contained by the police,"130 the government stated: the simple removal of illegal houses in accord with a legal process. It said a number of citizens were responsible for "some acts of riot which the police managed to control."131 An investigation was underway into the incident's circumstances, another government statement added.132

There has been no investigation, at least not one made public. Nor has there been any evidence from the government that reasonable warnings of the intent to use firearms were made, or that the use of firearms was absolutely necessary.

Dr. Sharaf Eldin Ibrahim Bannaga, minister of engineering of Khartoum State and the government official responsible for the execution of the demolition program, asserted to Human Rights Watch that there were police casualties at Khoder and other sites of conflict between the police and squatters or displaced, but that no one - no international press - reported on them.133 He also asserted thatpolice were attacked with gunfire at Khoder, although officials did not make this claim at the time.

The government was replying to an unusual storm of criticism. The shootings drew the condemnation of the U.S. government and the European Union. The U.S. State Department said the police shot into a crowd of unarmed protesters, including women and children, and called the incident "unjustifiable and a clear abuse of force by the government of Sudan. . . . The incident underscores the brutality and callousness of the policy of forcible resettlement of squatters in the Khartoum area, which has been proceeding off and on for years."134 The government of Sudan, in turn, protested the U.S. statement.135

The European Union also condemned the use of violence by Sudanese security forces in Omdurman on October 15, 1994, in response to a protest by settlers there against the razing of their homes. "These clashes left at least five squatters dead and at least fourteen severely injured."136 The European Union called upon the government of the Sudan to halt its violent campaign against the inhabitants of the squatter settlements, to compensate the victims of this campaign, and to hold accountable those responsible for the recent killings. The government of the Sudan was also called upon to investigate and fully explain the background to the incident.137

Dr. Bannaga said that the problems in Khoder started more than six months before the events of October 1994. Opposition parties were in Khoder, such as the "SPLA and Umma Party supporters who are army deserters."138 He blamed them for starting the struggle. He said the government went to Khoder in early 1994 and told the people of the decision that they would be relocated. The response was that the people burned down the tent used as a temporary office by the ministry of engineering, according to Dr. Bannaga. The popular committee later contacted the ministry again, saying that everything was calm and asking the ministry to return for a celebration. They were to celebrate the day on which the people were to be informed of the place and date of relocation: the date, Dr. Bannaga madeclear, was not an exact date but one within a period of several weeks, so that the people did not have an opportunity to organize to oppose the move.

According to Dr. Bannaga's account, a crowd of about one hundred was present in Khoder at 10:00 a.m. on the day in early February that the forced relocation was to have been formally announced. The representatives of the ministry, the popular committee, and the few soldiers guarding the spot were "surprised" when they were stoned. The chief of the popular committee was hit with a stone and hospitalized, according to Dr. Bannaga, and they treated others who were injured at an outpatient clinic. The government representatives asked the soldiers "not to retaliate, and we left."139

After that, a loudspeaker on a car went through the area informing people that they would be moved within six months to a place north of Marzuk. Before the stoning incident, the popular committee and other residents were taken to see the site. They drew lots for plot numbers. "My own evaluation was that they wanted 300 meter plots, not 200 meter ones," said Dr. Bannaga. After the stoning, the government knew it had opposition to the move and decided to guard the transport used to make the relocation and "to put up a show of force by placing police around the cantonment."140

On October 15, the unannounced day of the evictions, Dr. Bannaga said he arrived three to four hours after the riots. He was told that at about 7:00 a.m., for fifteen or twenty minutes, the crowd shot at the police, who shot in the air. Dr. Bannaga said one man was injured and the police vehicles took him to the hospital. After that things cooled down and there were no more incidents that day. Another man reportedly died that same day, but Dr. Bannaga claims that he was killed by a type of pistol which the police do not use; police were armed with rifles.141

The government's account of the events leading up to the killings makes clear that the government knew that there would be a difficult situation. The plan, however, was to guard the vehicles and "to put up a show of force by placing police around the cantonment."

The statement that members of the crowd used firearms for fifteen or twenty minutes before the police responded is hard to credit. No police or army casualties were reported on the day in question. No other agencies or personsinterviewed at that time alleged that the demonstrators used firearms, and the government did not make that allegation immediately, either.142

The government's version of the Khoder events is contradicted by the contemporaneous statements and research of many persons not associated with the government. We conclude that the weight of the evidence lies with the nongovernmental reports.

The next incident of resistance by slum dwellers to demolition of their homes and forcible removal occurred in March 1995 in the Omdurman area called Angola, where residents burned down a number of structures in protest. The government did not kill anyone during this forced displacement, in which police and army units collaborated. We were told, however, that the soldiers clubbed and broke the leg of a man who, like everyone else, fled when the army arrived.143 At any rate, this eviction at Angola showed that the government can carry out demolitions and relocations without shooting into a crowd and killing protestors.

Student Demonstrations and Police Conduct

The suppression of student demonstrations at the University of Khartoum and other universities in the Three Towns, through shootings, beatings and mass arrests, is described below in this Chapter VII. Students outside Khartoum have not fared noticeably better with regard to police conduct during their demonstrations. For instance, in May 1994 students at Gezeira University in Wad Medani joined a protest demonstration started by townspeople. Security forces opened fire, reportedly wounding one medical student and a young school girl. According to our sources, they detained about 1,800 students, and tortured some, including Lubna Ahmad Hisein (Faculty of Agriculture), who was said to have received electric shocks. The university administration dismissed thirty-nine students, and gave ten a "final warning."144 Abdel Muniem Rahma, a trade unionist detained two weeks after these demonstrations, and suspected of instigating them, died in custody.145

FREEDOM OF RELIGION

Religion is very high on the public agenda of the National Islamic Front-dominated government. Sudan's Constitutional Decree No. 7 (Principles, Regulations and Constitutional Developments for 1993), October 16, 1993, states in Article 1:

Islam is the guiding religion for the overwhelming majority of the Sudanese people. It is self-generating in order to avert stagnation and constitutes a uniting force that transcends confessionalism. It is a binding code that directs the laws, regulations and policies of the State. However, revealed religions such as Christianity, or traditional religious beliefs may be freely adopted by anyone with no coercion in regard to beliefs and no restriction on religious observances. These principles are observed by the State and its laws.

Only an estimated 60 to 70 percent of the Sudanese population is Muslim, however.146 As for the other religions, the Catholic church summarized the problem:

Aware that the State of Sudan sponsors and promotes Islam as the religion of the country, we Christians, as citizens of Sudan, demand an equal position for Christianity and expect to be treated in the same way as the Muslims. The present policy of identifying the country and the State with one religion only, Islam, shall not promote the spirit of dialogue, understanding, and peaceful co-existence among the citizens of the country.147

Freedom of religion for non-Muslims has been interfered with or denied in many ways, and non-Muslims have been discriminated against on account of religion. Church leaders speak of a continual struggle for survival againstomnipresent government interference and harassment. We do not know what formal status, if any, the government accords traditional African religions; although their practitioners outnumber Christians, especially in the south, they are less organized. Those who practice other religions often have been made to feel marginal or inferior by spokespersons for the National Islamic Front which controls the government.148

Being a Muslim does not guarantee freedom of religion, however. Some religious groups critical of the government and the National Islamic Front - as being insufficiently religious - have been subjected to harassment and their leaders detained. The two sects on which the two largest political parties were based have been subjected to government attempts at control and even confiscation of their property.

For Muslims, religious freedom is belied by the fact that apostasy, the repudiation by a Muslim of his faith in Islam, is punishable by death under section 126 of the 1991 Criminal Act. Recent converts may be excepted from this extreme penalty but the provision remains open to abuse. The death penalty may be imposed for what the court deems to amount to repudiation of belief in Islam, regardless of the actual beliefs of the accused. It is also open to political manipulation, as illustrated by the case of Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, a religious Muslim leader and founder of the Republican Brothers movement, executed in 1985 for apostasy.149

The deepest conflict is between the government and the Christian churches, however. The U.N. special rapporteur on Intolerance and of Discrimination based on Religion or Belief said in his December 1995 report that there had been positive measures in Sudan as a result of the meeting between Pope John Paul II and President Omar al Bashir of Sudan, in particular the "repeal of the law relating to missionary societies, allocations of land to Christians for construction of churches, and visa issue process made easier."150

It is true that the government took a step forward in its relations with the churches when it repealed the Missionary Society Act of 1962 in late 1994. It then took two steps backward when the president issued a decree that would have placed churches - but not mosques - in the same category as foreign relief organizations, required each congregation to register separately and secure approval from a minister to continue worshiping, and subjected them to numerous controls on their daily affairs which violate freedom of religion under Article 18 of the ICCPR. The churches rose in protest against its unfairness, and the decree was not enforced, but its issuance revealed the adverse and discriminatory treatment that non-Muslim religions receive from the Sudanese government despite lip service paid to the notion of respect for others' religions.

Government relations with Christian churches in government garrison southern towns have been conducted through the prism of the war. The government is constantly alert to possible rebel SPLA sympathizers and infiltrators, and church leaders figure high on its list of suspects.

The war permeates relations between the government and Christian churches because the government has characterized the civil war with southern-based rebel forces (mostly non-Muslim) as a jihad or Holy War on the part of the government and its religious adherents.151 Christians cannot be blamed for thinking that this rhetoric is aimed at them, whether they side with the SPLA or actively oppose it.152

The army provides religious training (in Islam) to conscripts and Popular Defense Forces militia in addition to military training.153 Christians - and practitioners of traditional African religions - are naturally out of place. There is no respect for the right to maintain one's own non-Muslim religion in this environment, and the pressure to conform by adapting to Islamic religious practices is great. Sudanese men must submit to army training if they are of the age of national military service, and both men and women must undergo forty-five day PDF training if they are government civil servants or have some other relationship with the government. Such PDF training is in addition to national service obligations for men, and is required for entry into university and professional licensing for both sexes.154

In this climate, where government rallies are held and the head of state addresses the participants as Muslims and encourages them to continue with the Holy War,155 there are frequent allegations of religious discrimination and of denials of freedom of religion, including freedom to manifest one's own religion.

Even absent the war, however, the NIF aspiration to create an Islamic state with "one language, Arabic, one religion, Islam," conflicts with the demands of Sudanese that their rights to practice different religions (and to preserve languagesand cultures) and to be treated equally by the government be respected. It appears that there are many in government who sincerely believe that conversion to Islam of everyone - including those who already have a religion - "is for their own good."156 Forced conversion, however, whether to a Christian sect or to Islam, violates fundamental human rights principles.

The government has pointed to the fact that the Christian population is growing.157 This is accurate. The Catholic church says that on Easter night of 1995 for instance, there were over 6,000 adults baptized in the Catholic Church in Khartoum. Freedom of religion and religious practices cannot be measured in numbers of conversions, however, since it is impossible to say what the numbers would be if the government ceased its abusive practices.158

National Islamist Front ideology, according to one of its main proponents, is expressed in the preamble to its constitution:

to group together `all the children of Sudan, men and women, regardless of their historical allegiances, their class situation or their regions' into one comprehensive organization working for a Muslim Sudan.159

One historian described the NIF's ideology regarding treatment of non-Muslims within an Islamic state: "Starting from the customary insistence that Islamic law protects religious liberty and would encourage religious practice in general, and an acceptance that non-Muslim communities can be left free to regulate their own family laws," the NIF proposes a territorial application of shari'a, considering the prevalence of certain religions or cultures in the area at variance with the religion dominant in the country at large. Thus not onlyChristians and practitioners of traditional African religions in southern Sudan were to be exempt from shari'a, but Muslims living in the south were to be similarly exempt.160

Theoretically, under its Sudan Charter of January 1987, the NIF accepts that a non-Muslim can be eligible for any office within the state, including head of state, although "religiousness in general may be taken into consideration as a factor of the candidate's integrity."161 However, the same historian notes,

Flexibility of approach seems to have existed in inverse relation to actual involvement in implementing an Islamist programme. . . . The Muslim Brotherhood [precursor of the NIF], despite its apparently flexible ideas, was effectively in alliance with Nimeiri while he was pursuing policies which were harsh, vindictive and fundamentalist. Even in the subsequent parliamentary regime, and despite the liberal ideas propounded in election programmes, NIF policies made possible the retention of the laws which Nimeiri had introduced and insisted that the courts should implement them . . . .

The apparent paradox of a movement whose approach is liberal and flexible in the abstract, but capable of supporting narrow and fundamentalist policies in practice, can only be understood with reference to the dynamics inherent in religious-based political movements. The religious basis ceases to be a framework within which ideas can be developed and debated, but becomes a badge of identity - a slogan around which specific sectors of the population can be mobilized, against other movements and parties. . . . Correspondingly, to opponents the religious dimension becomes symbolic of the attempt by one part of the population to oppress another. Internal and external pressures impinge to ensure that the religious framework does not remain open and adaptive.162

This may explain why the theory sounds better than the practice, and how elements of religious tolerance may appear in statutes but be lacking in day to dayaffairs. For instance, the government, defending itself against charges of forced Islamization, notes that "according to Qur'anic teachings there is no compulsion in religion, so the references [in the Special Rapporteur's report] to enforced Islamization and the killing of those who refuse to convert to Islam are against the fundamental principles enshrined in the Qur'an."163

What is at issue in any human rights report are government practices. The reply that "according to Qur'anic teachings there is no compulsion in religion" does not dispose of the issue; it cannot be assumed that all government practices are in complete harmony with Qur'anic teachings, since a government is only a human institution and not capable of perfection.

It is useful, however, that there is an official government statement that enforced Islamization is against fundamental Islamic principles. It would be most helpful if that statement were conveyed in a prominent way to government agencies that have been accused of using government resources and power to convert people to Islam, and to agencies with which the government contracts, including Islamic relief organizations such as Dawa Islamiyya (Islamic Call).164

Human Rights Watch has already published a report pointing out, with specific testimonies, the ways in which particular government agencies have attempted to Islamize children and adults with whom they come in contact, as in homes for street children and in the training of army recruits and the Popular Defense Forces militia.165 When these practices are terminated, then the government will no longer be accused of forced Islamization.

There is a small space for the appearance of tolerance, usually occupied by a government-appointed Christian such as State Minister for Foreign Affairs Bishop Gabriel Rorech, who holds a visible but token position and routinely is presented to visitors as proof of the lack of religious discrimination in Sudan.166The space may also be occupied by prominent foreign visitors such as the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. George Carey, who visited Khartoum and Juba in October 1995, and exercised the right to speak publicly and freely about the difficult situation of Christians in Sudan.167 He was quite outspoken, in what one newspaper referred to as "some of the bluntest speeches by an Archbishop of Canterbury in recent memory."168 In the southern town of Juba the archbishop referred to the "<torture, rape, destruction of property, slavery and death' being endured by Sudanese Christians as a result of the government's Islamicisation programme. `I challenge those who are responsible for such inhuman behaviour to stop. It is no part of any creed to treat fellow human beings with such disrespect and cruelty,' he said."169

Sudanese clergy, however, may not be so outspoken. They suffer from a constant campaign of harassment, most notably in the case of Catholic Archbishop Paolino Lukudu Loro of Juba, who is not even allowed to receive international visitors in private; all such conversations must take place in front of a Sudan Security agent.

Agnes Lukudu, the governor (wali) of Bahr El Jebel state where Juba is located, said that the Catholic archbishop takes part in politics, and "if you cannot see him, it is for the good of the people." She said that the bishop was like a king and was not in touch with the people; he did not mix with them except at mass, so "the whole story doesn't filter up." She preferred that Human Rights Watch speak to a priest. When we offered to do so if we could meet a priest privately, the offer was ignored. "If we allow anti-government people to meet with outsiders, they will say the Cabinet is dominated by Muslims," she said, then listed those in the Bahr El Jebel cabinet, herself included, who were Christians. She maintained that "it does not follow that if the area is predominantly Christian, the leadership should be held by Christians."

Many have realized that "the Church led us in Africa; we're trying to say to the Church, tell the truth," she said, ending the conversation by noting, "We [thecurrent government] are here to help the people to come out of the darkness,"170 a phrase frequently used by proselytizing Islamists when referring to their dealings with southern practitioners of traditional African religions and Christians.

The Catholic church in Juba is under extreme pressure from the government, even more than is visited on churches in Khartoum. Because of the archbishop's statements in homilies and pastoral letters about human rights, among other things, Sudan Security in Juba has been at loggerheads with Archbishop Paolino Lukudu Loro since 1990. He does not bend. In mid-1992, the SPLA attacked Juba twice and almost managed to reach the center of the city. Following the attacks, hundreds were rounded up by security and military intelligence and subsequently disappeared; some were tried for treason and executed but most remained unaccounted for. During that time many educated people close to the archbishop disappeared.171

The government's record is heavily weighted on the side of religious intolerance. Take, for example, the fury with which the government greeted the recommendation of Special Rapporteur Gaspar Biro to the government to abolish legislation contradicting provisions of international law to which Sudan is a party, referring to the hudud penalties.172 Claiming that the special rapporteur had attacked Islam, and seeking to speak for all the faithful, the government until recently barred him from the country and engaged in ad hominem attacks on his age, educational background, experience, and other personal qualities.173 While we believe that this is a pretext and an attempt to shield itself from criticism of human rights abuses, which Islam and all major religions condemn, the government's statements about the special rapporteur nevertheless imply religious intolerance in their reference to his commitment to observing a major Christian celebration.174 This attack on the special rapporteur's religious practices was followed by a further statement by the government including a veiled threat against him, in the name ofreligion: "we don't want to speculate about his fate if he is to continue offending the feelings of Muslims world wide by maintaining that call [for abolition of the hudud penalties], as he did in his current interim report."175

Ordinary non-Muslim Sudanese may be treated considerably more harshly. Two years after barring him, the government announced that the special rapporteur would be permitted to return to Sudan.176

The Applicable Law

Freedom of thought, conscience and religion is protected in Article 18 of the ICCPR which provides:

(1) Everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This right shall include freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice, and freedom, either individually or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching.

The African Charter also protects freedom of religion.177

Freedom of thought, conscience and religion is so fundamental that Article 18 of the ICCPR is nonderogable, which means it may not be suspended even in time of emergency. "Religion or belief" was not limited to a theistic belief but includes equally nontheistic or even atheistic beliefs.178

Freedom of religion also means freedom to change one's religion, under Article 18 (2) of the ICCPR. Attempts made during the drafting of the covenant to delete freedom to change religion were defeated. The right to retain one's religion, that is, to reject zealous proselytizers and missionaries, was also confirmed in thisparagraph. The clause also protects against coercion to support a religion other than one's own, "for instance by payment of church taxes or contributions."179

Limitations on the right to manifest one's religion - not on freedom of religion, however - are described in Article 18 (3).180 Limitations on the right to manifest one's religion are permitted in case of public safety and order (to prevent public disorder), but not for national security reasons. Limitations may be imposed only to protect "fundamental freedoms" of others.

"A state whose public policy is atheism, for example, cannot invoke Article 18 (3) to suppress manifestations of religion or beliefs," according to one legal authority.181 Nor can a state whose public policy is one religion use Article 18 (3) to justify the suppression of other religions.

In 1981 the General Assembly proclaimed the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief. Article 2 provides:

(1) No one shall be subject to discrimination by any State, institution, group of persons, or person on the grounds of religion or other belief.

(2) For the purposes of the present Declaration, the expression "intolerance and discrimination based on religion or belief" means any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on religion or belief and having as its purpose or as its effect nullification or impairment of the recognition, enjoyment or exercise of human rights and fundamental freedoms on an equal basis.

The declaration lists a number of religious freedoms, including the right to maintain charitable or humanitarian institutions, to acquire materials related to religious rights, to issue publications, to teach, to solicit financial contributions, totrain leaders, to observe holidays, and to communicate with others regarding religion, at the national and international levels.182

Christians

Christian churches have been subjected to government intrusion into the organization of their religious affairs. Christian priests have been arrested on specious charges, and church leaders have been denied their right to freedom of movement. Church-state relations are at a very low ebb.

Historically successive governments both during and since colonial times interfered with and regulated the activities of religions in Sudan by dividing the country into exclusive zones of influence - with the south set aside for Christian missionaries and off limits to Islamic proselytization and public worship. Christian missionaries were forbidden any activities in the rest of the country.183

Since independence, there have been enormous population shifts, with millions of southerners fleeing drought, war and famine from their homes in central and southern Sudan to the cities of the north, particularly in the 1980s and 1990s. Many internal migrants - southerners - banded together and formed Christian churches throughout the north; they arrived a few years later than the several hundred thousand drought victims from western Sudan - mostly Muslims - whose path they followed into urban shantytowns. In the Three Towns (Khartoum, Khartoum North and Omdurman) slums, the dispossessed southerners built their homes as well as their own small churches/community centers of cardboard, mud and other inexpensive materials.

After the 1989 coup, the NIF came to power with an Islamist agenda, openly determined to transform Sudan from a multi religious society into an Islamic state. This pressure to Islamize (and Arabize) may have contributed to southern migrants' increasing adherence to Christianity.184

In October 1994, the government sponsored a Muslim-Christian Religious Dialogue Conference which a representative of the Vatican addressed.185 As a concession to this forum, President (Lt. Gen.) Omar Hassan al Bashir announced that the Missionary Societies Act of 1962 would be repealed. This law, introduced by a previous military regime, was used to expel all foreign Christian missionaries from the country in 1964. One consequence of the law was the accelerated indigenization of the Christian churches in Sudan.186

After this conference, the government began meetings with various churches on an irregular basis in order to improve communications. Those in attendance for the government at meetings with the Catholic church included a representative of Sudan Security (on behalf of the ministry of interior), a representative of the ministry of social planning's office in charge of church personnel, a representative of the ministry of interior responsible for exit visas and other travel permits, and a representative of the Council for International People's Friendship.187

Most church leaders feel the dialogue is not going anywhere. One pointed to symbolic actions that are cost-free but deliberately neglected. For instance, the Kordofan governor and other officials were invited but failed to appear at the consecration of the bishop of El Obeid, Mons. Antonio Menegato, held on March 3, 1996.188

Arrest of Church Leaders

The government has claimed to have exposed particular priests or church leaders as rebel sympathizers and thus confirmed its suspicions that the churchesand their followers are a "fifth column" in the Islamic state. On January 16, 1996 the government in a filmed ceremony released a Catholic priest, Fr. Mark Lotede, and a Catholic school student, Simon Peter; at the ceremony the priest, detained in Juba, "admitted" that he had been involved in sabotage plans. This ceremony took place in the presence of government officials from Sudan Security and the ministry for social planning involved in church affairs, and the papal nuncio and other Catholic officials summoned there for that purpose.

Shortly after the priest and student were released, the Vatican accused Sudan Security of torturing the priest into confessing, and of torturing a student into testifying against the priest. The papal nuncio, Amb. Archbishop Erwin Josef Ender, wrote a scathing letter to the government after witnessing the event, and rejected all statements made there by the two men as the product of torture.189 "I was revolted by the lying and violent spectacle," the nuncio wrote. He also protested the fact that he and the other Catholic officials were brought to the ministry under false pretenses, saying he would never have attended if he had known they were going to stage such a televised spectacle.

Fr. Mark Lotede, of the Toposa tribe originating around Kapoeta in Eastern Equatoria, southern Sudan, had worked actively since 1991 against the government policy of abducting Toposa children and interning them in a camp at Qariat-Hanan where they were exposed to forced Islamization.190 According to Catholic church sources, some of the children were sent abroad to Libya and Saudi Arabia, some were sent to work on farms, and others were given military training and sent to the front. Fr. Lotede, a teacher at St. Mary's Minor Seminary in Juba, assisted the Toposa children who escaped from the camp and helped some register in the church schools in Juba; others tried to return to their Toposa villages outside Kapoeta.191

The government detained and interrogated Fr. Lotede several times about his work with the Toposa children. He was detained on December 27, 1995 in Juba. Simon Peter, a Toposa youth who had recently graduated from the Comboni secondary school in Khartoum where he had lived since 1989, was detained at theJuba airport on December 26, 1995. Both were released at the televised ceremony on January 16, 1996.192

Fr. Romeo Todo, a Catholic priest from the Didinga tribe of Eastern Equatoria and teacher at the Comboni College in Khartoum, was arrested on January 5, 1996 at the college in Khartoum and released January 14. He is chaplain to the Young Christian Students in the Archdiocese of Khartoum. He was reportedly questioned with regard to the activities of those just detained in Juba. The church attempted to mediate and secure the release of the two priests, daily inquiring in many fora about their whereabouts, but failed to learn anything until the ceremony.193 The government had an agreement with the Catholic church that no clergy would be arrested without first referring the case to the archbishop, but it did not follow the agreement, and the church did not learn of the allegations against the two priests until their release.

On January 16, the nuncio and Archbishop Gabriel Zubeir Wako of Khartoum were summoned by the ministry of social planning to come to its office to witness the freeing of Fr. Mark Lotede; the nuncio was specifically assured that there would be no television cameras present. Upon arrival, they saw that a television camera was filming all the events. In addition, the detained clerics were not turned over to the nuncio immediately, but the Catholic prelates, accompanied by the secretary general of the Sudan Council of Churches, Mons. John Dingi, were required to witness the clearly rehearsed "confessions" of the student Simon Peter and Fr. Lotede, while M. Abdin, from Sudan Security in Juba, sat in the corner to monitor events. Dr. Mustafa O. Isma'il, of the government-sponsored Council for International People's Friendship, also attended.

At the ceremony, the government charged that Fr. Lotede was planning to blow up security installations in the town of Juba, where he was based, and had set up an organization, including several politicians, to send students to SPLA-controlled Narus to the southeast of Juba.194

In the letter to the diplomatic corps in Khartoum, the nuncio stated that the student Simon Peter and Fr. Mark Lotede had been physically and psychologically tortured and their lives threatened by security to force them to make false statements, and that they denied to him that they had ever done what they confessed to. The nuncio firmly asserted that all the confessions made there were"completely false" and did not correspond to the facts, that the whole story and its details were "pure inventions."195

According to information available to Human Rights Watch, Fr. Mark Lotede was tortured for three hours on the day of his arrest by Sudan Security in Juba and accused of being the "obstacle to and enemy of Islamization among the Toposa people."196 His physical torture came to an end after a senior Sudan Security officer intervened and stopped it. According to Fr. Lotede's statement to church authorities, intense interrogation and psychological torture continued for eight days: he was told that the Toposa youth in detention would continue to be tortured and would eventually be executed if he did not accept as true the allegations against him. He could hear the cries of these youth under torture almost every night from his cell. Once he gave in to this enormous pressure, to save their lives, he was taken to a judge to plead guilty, but he was not given any opportunity to plead innocent or explain himself. He was threatened with death if he did not follow the script: the security officer who had tortured him put a pistol to Fr. Lotede's head to press this point home.

According to the accounts given to the church, Simon Peter and three other Toposa youth were detained together by Sudan Security in Juba. The four were accused of being rebels and tortured, and one was subjected to electric shocks. They were told their family members would be killed (some of the family members were even identified by name) if they did not admit to the allegations against them and Fr. Lotede. They were rehearsed with a script full of accusations against Fr. Lotede for nine days, and beaten when they deviated from it. The four were taken to the judge at the same time as Fr. Lotede and their false testimonies were videotaped and tape recorded. On January 13, 1996, Simon Peter and Fr. Lotede were flown to Khartoum.

Two weeks after the releases, Sudan Security began to search for the student Simon Peter, harassing his home in Khartoum and detaining a neighborhood girl for thirteen hours for questioning about him. The family temporarily left their home to avoid constant security visits at odd hours of the night. The papal nuncio wrote twice to the government on Simon's behalf, to no effect.197

The Attempt to Register Churches as "Voluntary Societies"

In October 1994, at a government-sponsored religious dialogue conference, President al Bashir announced that the Missionary Societies Act of 1962 would be repealed. While welcoming the nascent dialogue, leaders of the indigenous Church voiced their concern for the use of religion in the war in southern Sudan, complained about the lack of religious freedoms and called for equality between Muslims and Christians.

The repeal of the Missionary Societies Act did not lead to churches finally receiving the equality under law they sought with the followers of Islam. The president instead decreed and signed new legislation in late 1994 (Provisional Order of October 4, 1994)198 to regulate church affairs, which would have treated churches not as spiritual institutions of heavenly origin but as foreign nongovernmental organizations which must be registered with a state official, who would have the power to terminate their existence.199 There was such resistance to the Provisional Order that it has not been enforced. No other legislation has been proposed in its place.

The Episcopal and Catholic churches responded in writing to the Provisional Order, the Catholic church condemning it as "the most comprehensive, thorough and far-reaching attempt to control (and potentially to terminate) the life and activity of the Church."200 The Episcopal church found the Provisional Order "repugnant and irrelevant to the evangelistic mission of the church."201

Unlike Article 22 of the ICCPR on free association and Article 21 on peaceable assembly, Article 18 on freedom of religion is a nonderogable right - meaning it cannot be suspended even in time of war or other extreme emergency - and its limitations clause is more circumscribed than are the limitations clauses of Article 22 or 21. Therefore limits on nonreligious organizations that might be permissible under Article 22 or Article 21, such as restrictions for reasons of national security, are not applicable to religious organizations under Article 18.

The Provisional Order the government wanted to apply to the churches, however, would

have amended the Alien Voluntary Work in the Sudan (Organization) Act of 1988, which regulates - tightly - the affairs of foreign nonprofit organizations. The Provisional Order would add to the definition of organization covered by the Alien Voluntary Work Act "any foreign voluntary organization whose purpose is to carry out work the nature of which is . . . religious."202 In the past few years the number of international nongovernment nonprofit relief and development organizations have been subjected to increasingly tight restrictions by the ministry of social planning and others on their charitable activities in Sudan, to the point where many found government interference made their presence untenable, and terminated operations in the country.203

At the same time, the Provisional Order would have amended another law, the Societies Registration Act of 1957, which applied to national nongovernment organizations, and extended its coverage to religious organizations.204 Prior to the Provisional Order, religious work was not covered by the Alien Voluntary Work Act or the Societies Registration Act.

The Catholic church rejected the definition of the Church as a purely human society and organization, and therefore considered that the Provisional Order did not apply to the Catholic church.205 The Provisional Order would have required all churches existing before October 1994 to apply for registration to the Commissioner of Social Planning within sixty days,206 according to the Episcopal Church of Sudan. It would have required each new congregation of existing churches to register as new and separate churches. That commissioner would have the power to accept or reject the application, forwarding it to the minister of social planning for approval of the rejection or registration on fulfilment of conditions.If the conditions were not fulfilled by the church within ninety days, it was to cease to function, and its assets disposed of in liquidation.207

The requirements for churches under the Provisional Order appear to be identical to what would be required for an ordinary foreign nonprofit corporation: submit an annual statement of accounts to the minister, hold annual meetings, file a membership list, elect officers as set forth in its by-laws, and so forth. This would not be limited to the relief and development programs of churches, but extended to them as entire spiritual institutions, according to the Episcopal Church.208 The minister would have the power to cancel a registration if a church contravened the provisions of the act. He could cancel a registration if a church's total membership was less than th