African Centre for Justice and Peace Studies ACJPS | المركز الافريقي لدراسات العدالة و السلام
Joint Press release
(25 April 2019) This briefing identifies priority areas for reform on torture in Sudan following the recent removal of Omar al-Bashir as President. It focuses on reparations for victims of torture, ensuring individual accountability and preventing torture in the future.
CURRENT SITUATION
The situation in Sudan remains in flux following President al-Bashir’s removal on 11 April 2019. The military council, now led by General Burhan, has promised to dismantle al-Bashir’s regime, release detained protesters, and restructure the National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS). The Director of NISS, Salah Gosh, has resigned.
The military council has pledged respect for human rights, accountability for corruption, and justice for killings of protesters and other human rights violations, and has reportedly met with political parties and groups behind the protests. However, protesters remain on the streets calling for justice, accountability and for the immediate installation an independent civilian government.
TORTURE IN SUDAN
The prevalence of torture in Sudan is a longstanding concern. Human rights defenders, women, political activists, lawyers, journalists, trade unionists, students and other groups have been systematically targeted.
The NISS and Sudanese Military Intelligence are the primary institutions responsible for torture and ill-treatment cases in detention. Security agents have been vested with wide-ranging immunities, and have carried out a range of human rights violations with impunity. Sudan’s National Security Act 2010 provides a legal foundation giving the NISS extensive powers to arrest, arbitrarily detain, and interrogates perceived political opponents and those with perceived links to rebel groups, in order to silence opposition. Torture is commonly practised by police and prison staff to extract confessions or to extort money. Police in particular are implicated in the enforcement of public order laws, and numerous reports of ill-treatment, torture and sexual violence of female prisoners in police stations exist. Members of the army and paramilitary forces have also been extensively implicated in torture in the course of military campaigns in Southern Sudan, Kordofan, the Blue Nile region and Darfur.
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