ICC Note: Intelligence officials in Sudan are requiring five church leaders to report daily for questioning, effectively serving as daily arrests for them, as authorities often hold them all day long. This comes while two Sudanese pastors remain holed up in Kober Men’s prison without charge and incommunicado. Sudan arrested Telal Nogossi Rata and Hassan Abdelrahim Taour 120 and 115 days ago, respectively. The Sudan constitution requires detained suspects to face charges after just 45 days. The crackdown represents a continual pattern in the past year that the Omar al-Bashir government regularly inflicts upon the Church. Bashir represents one of Africa’s worst persecutors, oppressing Christians through arbitrary arrests and legal contradictions, afflicting pastors and church members with beatings, while also bombing the majority-Christian Nuba Mountains region constantly.
4/11/16 Khartoum, Sudan (World Watch Monitor) – Sudanese authorities have, apparently against their own law, continued to keep two church leaders incommunicado since mid-December, with no official charges yet filed against them; recently Sudan has also increased the number of church leaders who must report every day to its security services.
Telahoon Nogosi Kassa Rata, a leader of Khartoum North (Bahri) Evangelical Church, and Rev. Hassan Abduraheem Kodi Taour of the Sudan Church of Christ (SCC) continue to be detained, even though Sudanese law says that 45 days after arrest a detained individual should either be presented before court or released. It is now 120 days since Rata’s arrest on 14 December, and 115 days since Taour’s arrest.
Initially Rata’s detention was suggested to be “on religious charges”, but sources close to the case have hinted the Christian activist is now being investigated for espionage, a charge Sudan has eventually resorted to before, after prolonged detentions of Christians.
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