Press Release

The Government’s Trials of Darfuri Sympathizers:
Gross Violation of the Independent Judiciary and International Norms

APRIL 16, 2005

On April 14th, a Sudanese court sentenced with life imprisonment and other harsh punishments a group of military personnel sympathizing with the Darfuri victims of war. The convicted citizens included civilians - members of the opposition party, the People’s Congress - who had been earlier accused by the authorities of a conspiracy to overthrow the ruling regime by military coup.

Prior to the trials, the accused persons were publicly reprimanded and then repeatedly threatened by key government officials from the ruling party and the executives, including the minister of defense, the minister of interior, and other prosecutors. The defense team was denied access to the accused by stringent measures that unlawfully deprived the accused persons from family visitation for lengthy periods prior to the trials. SHRO-Cairo reports, as well as many other reports by human rights groups, expressed grave concerns for tortures and other unlawful methods imposed by the prosecutors to force the accused citizens to plea guilty.

Thus politically announced, administratively pursued, and judicially endorsed under the state of emergency law, the trials have been largely politicized by the government for political reasons in gross violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Sudan is a party, as well as the other supportive protections by the country’s law and its prohibited judicial heritage. The trials added another killing blow to the independence of the Sudanese Judiciary that the ruling regime has been recklessly violating by military and/or executive presidential decrees since the 30th of June, 1989.

· The Sudan Human Rights Organization Cairo Office condemns in the strongest terms possible the unlawfulness of the trials and their politicized sentences.

· The Organization holds the government’s party and top judicial executives fully responsible for the politicization, marginalization, and destruction of the independence of the Sudanese Judiciary, including previous trials as well as the most recent trials of the Darfur sympathizers.

· SHRO-Cairo urges the government to end the state of emergency, re-instate the dismissed judicial personnel (since June 1989) who included a sizeable portion of the most experienced judges of the country; re-structure the Judiciary by the Judiciary to be able to maintain its own High Council and autonomous entity, apart from governmental military or party influences; and ascertain the independence of the Bar Association.

· To ensure fair implementation of these measures and other relevant provisions, the government must re-instate the Sudanese Judiciary under a democratic system of justice in full accordance with international norms and the rule of law.

· The Organization further asks the Sudan Government to immediately free the Darfuri sympathizers from jail due to the serious violations of the due process of justice and the obvious lack of an independent non-politicized judiciary in their trials.

· The government must protect the rights of the accused persons as free citizens until proved guilty by public, non-political, fair, and principled trials by Independent Judiciary.