SUDANESE STUDENT’S LIFE AT RISK

On 19 July, security officials arrested Siddig Salah Siddig al-Bashir, a post-graduate student, from his home in the Sudanese capital Khartoum. His family have repeatedly sought information about his whereabouts. On 24 July the National Security Services (NSS) denied having him. Siddig Salah Siddig al-Bashir’s life might be at risk.
Over 50 plainclothes officials from the National Security Service (NSS) surrounded the family home of Siddig Salah Siddig al-Bashir at midnight on 19 July. Agents searched the house before blindfolding and arresting him in front of his family. When his mother complained of the way he was being treated and attempted to stop the NSS from leaving with her son, a security agent twisted her arm and threatened her with a gun to her head. Siddig Salah Siddig al-Bashir’s brother also tried to intervene, and was beaten and arrested as well. He was released the next day after having been tortured in detention. The whereabouts of Siddig Salah Siddig al-Bashir remain unknown.
Siddig Salah Siddig al-Bashir is a post-graduate student at the University of Khartoum. He has previously been an activist with the Student Democratic Front and the Sudanese Communist Party. In an attempt to crackdown on recent uprisings and demonstrations in Sudan, scores of known activists have been arrested, regardless of actual involvement in protests. It is likely that Siddig Salah Siddig al-Bashir was arrested as part of this crackdown.
Siddig Salah Siddig al-Bashir’s relatives visited the NSS office on three occasions to try and obtain information on his whereabouts. On the third occasion on 24 July, an NSS employee told the family that the NSS had no detainee called Siddig Salah Siddig al-Bashir in their custody, and declined to provide further information or assistance.
The NSS’s denial of Siddig’s Salah Siddig al-Bashir’s detention after he was arrested by NSS agents several days earlier may amount to an enforced disappearance, putting him outside the protection of the law. Without access to a lawyer or his family he is at serious risk of torture and other ill-treatment, and his life might be at risk.