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July 24, 2024 (GEDAREF) – Emergency Lawyers, a watchdog group that monitors human rights violations in Sudan, has accused military intelligence of illegally detaining civilians on the basis of ethnic profiling for their suspected links to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
“Gadaref state is experiencing intense activity by security groups run by military intelligence, who are detaining civilians based on tribes and regions, in addition to activists calling for an end to the war,” the lawyers said in a statement sent to Sudan Tribune on Wednesday.
They revealed that last June, the Military Intelligence arrested 120 civilians in the Al Shoak area of Gedaref State on the grounds that they were cooperating with the Rapid Security Forces simply because they belonged to tribesmen from West Darfur.
The statement said 70 people were being held at the Gedaref military base, while others had been forcibly disappeared. Some of the detainees were transferred to the Gedaref police station after being charged with crimes punishable by life imprisonment and the death penalty.
According to Emergency Lawyer, the Gedaref city court “sentenced some detainees to death, prison sentences and fines, and denied them the right to a fair trial.”
A wave of arrests has been sparked by drone attacks on military and security installations in Sudan’s eastern state, as well as the arrest of several people suspected of smuggling weapons and ammunition from Ethiopia.
Activists and human rights defenders have criticised the trial proceedings of dozens of people accused of collaboration and collusion with the Rapid Support Forces in northern and eastern Sudan, saying it lacks the basis for a fair trial.
Urgent Lawyers said the intelligence services of the Second Infantry Division, the military base in Gedaref, the General Intelligence Directorate, the police force, and some judges and prosecutors with ties to the security services continued to carry out arbitrary arrests under legal cover.
The group condemned the practices of the security services in Sudanese states, especially those run by the military intelligence service of Gedaref, stressing that their violations against civilians lead to tension and injustice in all sectors of society.
They stressed that the situation poses a threat to social peace in Gedaref, the main hub for hundreds of thousands of displaced people from all over the country, due to hate speech and racism among residents.
“The judiciary has become a tool complicit in such violations, denying detainees their right to a fair trial and making arbitrary decisions against civilians,” they added.
Military authorities in several states have set up “security teams,” a joint force of the army, intelligence services and police with broad powers to arrest civilians, and whose members mostly wear masks.
The urgent lawyers called on the army to immediately release all detainees, disclose the whereabouts of those who have been forcibly disappeared, and put an end to the crimes committed by security teams against unarmed civilians in states controlled by the armed forces.
The army and Rapid Support Forces arrested and detained thousands of civilians on the pretext of collaborating with the other side, without informing their families of their fate.
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