Report, July 23( Darfur 24)
Former detainees in the detention centers of the joint forces fighting alongside the Sudanese army in El Fasher revealed shocking stories they experienced during their detention.
The accounts of survivors of the armed movements’ detention centers in El Fasher shed light on the illegal detention centers in which inhumane torture, such as starvation, is practiced, causing the death of dozens of them inside these prisons, according to the accounts heard by “Darfur 24.”
Torture by starvation
“Darfur 24” conducted interviews with a number of survivors and those close to some of the victims who died in these detention centers as a result of hunger and torture of various kinds.
Mohaimen Youssef, a young man in his twenties, spent 47 days in a detention center affiliated with the Joint Armed Movements Forces, before he was released by an officer who knew a family member.
Youssef was detained at the former headquarters of the UNAMID mission, which today has become the main headquarters of the armed movement forces in El Fasher.
Youssef tells the story of his arrest after his release, saying that he and his father decided to leave their home in the Al-Ma’ahad neighborhood due to the intensification of battles east of El-Fasher, and that was 7 days after the situation exploded last May.
He added, “A member of the armed movements stopped them at one of the joint force’s outposts in the Al-Tarifiyya neighborhood, east of the market, before his father asked permission because they wanted me to stay at the outpost for interrogation reasons.”
Youssef confirmed that he “stayed an entire night at the base before his father returned the next morning to be officially informed that I was accused of being an intelligence officer for the Rapid Support Forces, so that I would be transferred to one of their detention centers at the former UNAMID headquarters, where I spent 47 days without interrogation other than torture.”
He said: “I remained in detention with 34 others in the hangar. We ate one meal a day, 4 bites per person, and the detainees’ suffering from hunger worsened, in addition to the suffering of others from chronic diseases in light of the complete lack of medicines in the detention center.”
Youssef confirmed that he witnessed the death of 7 people among the detainees due to hunger, disease and torture, and added, “These 7 people died in our hangar only, not to mention other detention centers.”
He stated that the deceased are being transported by a combat vehicle, but we do not know where they are going.
Ransom in exchange for release
For his part, a police officer who preferred to withhold his identity for security reasons told “Darfur 24” that the joint force arrested police assistant Abdul Moez Jamal al-Din, who works in passports and immigration in North Darfur and is from the city of Gedaref in eastern Sudan, from his home in the First Degree neighborhood last June.
He said that the movements had previously asked the policeman to leave his house next to the house of Major General Gedo Hamdan Abunchuk, commander of the Rapid Support Sector in North Darfur, before he was arrested from his house and taken to the detention center where he died of torture, according to the doctors’ report.
He added, “The joint force has a number of arbitrary detention centers in both UNAMID and Zamzam camp, and recently it opened other prisons in its new concentration area in the Golo reservoir, 9 km west of El Fasher,” explaining that the joint force began accumulating funds from these arbitrary arrests after demanding that the detainees’ families pay ransom. Money in exchange for their release.
In turn, Makina Ahmed, a housewife from the Muqrin area, west of El Fasher, narrates that the “joint force” affiliated with the armed struggle movements arrested her son before releasing him after the mediation of a number of El Fasher notables, noting that her brother, Youssef Ahmed, is still in detention in the movements’ prisons to this day. After no news of him for more than three months.
The joint force demanded that he be released immediately or brought to justice.
Human rights defenders in North Darfur revealed that the joint force of the armed movements allied with the Sudanese army carried out a massive arrest campaign that targeted political and civilian leaders on suspicion of being a collaborator with the Rapid Support Forces.
Lawyer and human rights defender Abdelaziz Othman Sam said in a letter addressed to the head of the Sudan Liberation Movement, Minni Arko Minawi, late last June, that the movement’s intelligence arrested the former parliamentarian and human rights activist, Siham Hassan Hasballah.
This was denied by the movement’s spokesman, Al-Sadiq Ali Nour, in a press clarification that the movement had no connection to the arrests in El Fasher, and he stated that the Joint Force Intelligence is the one carrying out the arrests after gathering sufficient information about the people subject to the charges.