25 SCP leaders now detained in Sudan

The arrest of the opposition Sudanese Congress Party (SCP) head Khalid El Malih of White Nile State from his agricultural project in Kosti Monday brings the number of SCP leaders in detention to 25.

Speaking to Radio Dabanga on behalf of the SCP leadership on Tuesday, Dr El Fateh El Sayed that all the detainees, including the party’s President Omar Yousif El Digeir, and the former President, now the Deputy President and Secretary General of the Party, Ibrahim El Sheikh, are being kept incommunicado at a secret location.

“Nobody knows anything about their current whereabouts, nor have their families been able to visit them,” he said, stressing that “these arrests will not stop the party from its struggle and resistance against the price increases, but will only increase our resilience, making speeches, and going out into the streets in protest”.

On Monday in Kassala, the security services arrested seven people including five women and confiscated their mobile phones during a sit-in organised by dozens of activists east and west of Kassala in protest against the liberalisation of medicine prices and the recent economic measures.

A witness told Radio Dabanga that security services took two doctors Khalil and Yasser Bakri Hashim, and five women to the police station and filed a complaint against them on charges of rioting before releasing them with ordinary bail at 10 pm on Monday.

Earlier, Kamal Omar, the political secretary of the PCP described the detention campaign as “an assault on civil liberties and a violation of the outputs of National Dialogue”.