Home page | News Tuesday 24 May 2011
Darfur peacekeepers say unaware their plane was used to transport
political detainee
* Article
* Comments (0)
email Email
print Print
pdfSave
separation
increase
decrease
separation
separation
*
*
*
*
May 19, 2011 (KHARTOUM) – The hybrid peacekeeping mission in Darfur
(UNAMID) said it was not aware that Sudanese authorities used one of
its planes to transfer a political detainee from the opposition
Popular Congress Party (PCP).
JPEG - 17.5 kb
The African Union-United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID)
holds a ceremony in Nyala, Sudan, to celebrate the arrival of five
tactical helicopters from the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia
(UN Photo/Albert Gonzalez Farran)
The PCP, which is led by the veteran Islamist leader Hassan Al-Turabi
accused UNAMID last April of using one of its private jets to transfer
Hassab Allah Al-Ajab, one of the party’s political detainees, from an
area called Alli’aid Jar Al Nabi to El Fasher, the provincial capital
of north Darfur.
The party reported the case to UNAMID’s chief, Ibrahim Gambari, and
threatened to report the matter to the UN chief, Ban Ki-Moon, if no
explanation is provided.
According to the PCP’s human rights secretary, Hassan Abdellah
Al-Hussain, UNAMID informed his party that investigations into the
case concluded that the mission’s personnel who transferred the
detainee were not aware of his identity.
Al-Hussain, who was speaking in a press conference held in the
Sudanese capital Khartoum on Monday’s afternoon, said that UNAMID
claimed that the authorities told it that the transferee was a local
official.
Last April the opposition party said UNAMID had participated in
transporting several political prisoners from remote areas in Darfur
to state security offices in big towns.
Since the dissidence of 1999 among the Sudanese Islamists, security
services used to arrest regularly the leader of the party Hassan
Al-Turabi, leading members and supporters.
Al-Hussian criticized the continued detention of PCP members by
security authorities, and warned against any attempt to create flimsy
excuses to re-arrest party members.
The PCP official further slammed the ministry of justice for ignoring
the party’s demands for the release of its detainees.
The PCP leader Hassan Al-Turabi was released from jail in May this
year after three months of detention without charges.
The veteran government opponent, who has been arrested several times
since he broke ranks with the ruling National Congress Party, said
after his release that he had not been interrogated and no one told
him why he was arrested.
It is widely believed that Al-Turabi was arrested against the
background of his warnings that the government could face a popular
uprising modeled on those currently seen in some Arab countries if it
continued to resist demands for reforms.
(ST)
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "JFD
info" group.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
[email protected].
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/jfdinfo?hl=en.
