Khartoum: Nine Sudanese university professors, many of them activists, have been detained during a campus raid, hours after President Omar Al Bashir spoke of political dialogue and reform, a lawyer said on Tuesday.
“We can confirm that nine professors were arrested yesterday from inside Ahfad University” in Khartoum’s twin city of Omdurman, Nabeel Adeeb, a prominent lawyer and head of the Sudanese Human Rights Monitoring Association, told AFP.
He said they were picked up Monday evening while meeting inside the campus.
“They were taken to an unknown location,” Adeeb said, adding that two of the detainees are ill and another is the mother of a baby.
“We are calling for their immediate release, otherwise authorities must allow their lawyer to meet them and doctors to examine them.”
Activists say prisoners arrested by Sudan’s state security bureau are routinely held without an initial charge and without people immediately knowing their whereabouts.
In a speech opening a new session of parliament on Monday, Bashir talked of reform and political dialogue after the most serious split in years within his ruling party.
