Sudan: leaders arrested were not detained on political grounds, but rather criminal procedures
Khartoum, Sudan (PANA) - The Sudanese Army on Thursday reiterated that the group of politicians currently being interrogated by police was not summoned for political reasons.
Brigadier Al-Taher Abu-Haja, advisor of the president of the Sudanese Transitional Sovereign Council-cum- Commander-in-Chief of the Army, has said those persons were summoned by police and attorney general for interrogation on charges of misappropriation and dishonesty, far away from any political motivations.
On Wednesday, police summoned two leaders of a dissolved committee that was set for disempowering and removing the legacy of the ousted government of Omar Bashir, for interrogation.
The charge was under Article 177/2 of the Sudanese criminal procedure law which deals with dishonesty in handling public capitals and public properties.
A third politician, Omar Khalid, former Cabinet Affairs minister, was also summoned for interrogation but the charges were not revealed.
The arrested included Khalid Omar, former Cabinet Affairs minister, Wagdi Salih, a spokesperson of the Forces for Freedom and Change, and Al Tayeb Osman member of the FFC politburo.
Salih and Osman are also members of the committee set up after the success of the uprising in 2019 to dismantle the legacy of Omar Bashir’s regime, including retrieving capitals, rrreal estates and other wealth illicitly gained by that regime (1989-2019).
However, a year later the same committee was accused by pro-Bashir forces of misusing its powers and using its leverage for settling political differences with Islamists and any element that was not supportive of the nascent regime.
“This is not a detention,” Abu Haja was quoted by the official Sudanese news agency as saying, explaining that there was a big difference “summoning warrant” for criminal procedures interrogation and “detention warrant”.
He added that in Sudanese laws detention order is issued by the security services, while the arrest warrant is issued by the justice apparatus including the prosecution and the judiciary.
Abu-Haja was quoted as saying he was indeed surprised because some quarters reporting about the event had tried to portray the event as political, while it was pure criminal procedure.
He revealed that according to Article 177, paragraph 2 of the Criminal Law, accused persons may not be released on payment of ordinary bails, but only by depositing amounts equaling the material value of the issue in question.
But he stressed that those accused were innocent until proven by due process of law to be guilty.
Abu-Haja emphasized that these were normal legal procedures that could not be described as “detention”, but rather “an arrest warrant” in accordance with the criminal procedures law.
-0-PANA MO/RA 10Feb2022
