The Sudanese Human Rights Monitor (SHRM) strongly condemns the repeated violations against civilians committed by both parties to the conflict, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). These violations include arbitrary arrests, torture, and extrajudicial killings.
In Kassala State, on 31 August 2024, at eight-thirty in the morning, the General Intelligence Service (GIS) arrested Al-Amin Mohamed Nour Mohamed from his workplace. Al-Amin, 29 years old, was married and the father of a daughter. He was a restaurant owner from Wad Sharifi in Kassala State. Al-Amin was detained at the GIS headquarters in the city of Kassala, and his death was announced there hours later as a result of torture and severe beatings, according to his medical report.
Also, in Kassala, a court issued a death sentence against Mohamad Othman Abu Hurairah on 25 August 2024 on charges of collaborating with the RSF. Mohamed Othman, 23 years old, was a faculty of medical engineering student at a technical university in Khartoum. He was a resident of Khartoum, from which he was displaced to Madani [in Gezira state] . After the RSF invaded the city [in December 2023], he was arrested [by RSF] and tortured but managed to escape. Mohamad travelled to Kassala on his way out of Sudan to one of the Gulf countries, but he was arrested [by GIS] at the end of May and charged with cooperating with the RSF. The SHRM expresses concern about the recent increase in death sentences against young men and women, depriving them of the right to a fair trial. In some cases, the accused are subjected to immediate punishment by security services or mobilised individuals.
The SHRM warned in a legal briefing last May about the amendments introduced to the General Intelligence Law, which, since April 2024, has granted the agency powers of arrest, detention, oversight, inspection, and investigation. The amendments also granted agency members complete immunity for all acts carried out in their official capacity, protecting them from prosecution. The SHRM stated that these amendments legitimise arbitrary arrests that lack the necessary guarantees to protect the rights of detained persons.
The SHRM calls on the authorities in Kassala State to conduct a transparent investigation into the incident involving Al-Amin Mohamed Nour, as his family has the right to know the truth and hold accountable those responsible for violating his right to life and subjecting him to severe torture.
We also call on the Sudanese authorities to rescind all the amendments introduced last April to the GIS law, particularly as these amendments were issued in clear violation of the 2019 constitutional document on which they were based and of international human rights conventions that Sudan has ratified, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Sudan acceded in 1986, and the Convention against Torture, to which Sudan acceded in 2021. Article 2 of the convention stipulates: ‘No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.’
The war in Sudan has exceeded 500 days, and both parties to the conflict have committed serious violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law during this war. The conflict has resulted in unprecedented suffering, affecting civilians throughout Sudan, with more than 10 million displaced people representing 20% of the country’s population, making it the largest displacement crisis in the world. More than 25 million people, half of Sudan’s population, also face the risk of acute hunger. The SHRM calls on both sides of the conflict to immediately stop this war, which is the primary source of these violations and the humanitarian catastrophe Sudan is now experiencing. The international community must urge both parties to the conflict to end the war and exert sufficient pressure to prevent further human rights violations in Sudan.
