In Sudan, Ex-official Detained Ahead of Anti-coup Protests

People chant slogans during a anti-coup protests that have rocked the country since a military coup three months ago.in Khartoum, Sudan, Sunday, Jan. 30, 2022. (AP)
People chant slogans during a anti-coup protests that have rocked the country since a military coup three months ago.in Khartoum, Sudan, Sunday, Jan. 30, 2022. (AP)
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In Sudan, Ex-official Detained Ahead of Anti-coup Protests

People chant slogans during a anti-coup protests that have rocked the country since a military coup three months ago.in Khartoum, Sudan, Sunday, Jan. 30, 2022. (AP)
People chant slogans during a anti-coup protests that have rocked the country since a military coup three months ago.in Khartoum, Sudan, Sunday, Jan. 30, 2022. (AP)

Sudan’s military authorities have again arrested a former senior government official, his party said, as pro-democracy groups on Monday readied more protests against a military coup that plunged the country into turmoil.

The Unionist Alliance party said Mohammed al-Faki Suliman, former member of the ruling Sovereign Council, was detained Sunday in the capital of Khartoum. It said security forces stopped his vehicle as he was heading from his home to the party’s headquarters.

Suliman was also deputy head of a government-run agency tasked with dismantling the legacy of former President Omar al-Bashir’s regime.

Also Sunday, security forces arrested two former members of the agency, according to a security official who spoke on condition of anonymity. The agency is known as The Committee to Dismantle the Regime of June 30, 1989, in reference the Islamist-backed military coup that brought Bashir to power.

The official said the three were taken to the Souba prison in Khartoum. He said they were facing charges related to the work of the agency, which the military disbanded following the Oct. 25 takeover.

Suliman had been detained in the coup and was released a month later as part of a deal between the military and then-Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok.

He was the latest of a series of former government officials and activists to be detained in recent weeks as military rulers stepped up crackdown on anti-coup groups.

Last week, authorities rearrested Khalid Omar, a minister in the ousted transitional government. Also arrested Wagdi Saleh, another committee member.

The detentions have intensified in recent weeks as Sudan plunged into further turmoil with near-daily street protests since the coup.

The takeover upended Sudan’s transition to democratic rule after three decades of international isolation under Bashir, who was removed from power in 2019 after a popular uprising.

Protest groups have called for street demonstrations Monday in Khartoum and elsewhere in the country, demanding the establishment of a fully civilian government to lead the transition.

Sudan has been politically paralyzed since the coup. The turmoil has worsened since the resignation last month of Hamdok, who complained of failure to reach a compromise between the generals and the pro-democracy movement.



Amnesty Accuses Israel of 'Live-streamed Genocide' against Gaza Palestinians

TOPSHOT - Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on the Yafa school building, a school-turned-shelter, in Gaza City on April 23, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
TOPSHOT - Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on the Yafa school building, a school-turned-shelter, in Gaza City on April 23, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
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Amnesty Accuses Israel of 'Live-streamed Genocide' against Gaza Palestinians

TOPSHOT - Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on the Yafa school building, a school-turned-shelter, in Gaza City on April 23, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
TOPSHOT - Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on the Yafa school building, a school-turned-shelter, in Gaza City on April 23, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)

Amnesty International on Tuesday accused Israel of committing a "live-streamed genocide" against Palestinians in Gaza by forcibly displacing most of the population and deliberately creating a humanitarian catastrophe.

In its annual report, Amnesty charged that Israel had acted with "specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, thus committing genocide".

Israel has rejected accusations of "genocide" from Amnesty, other rights groups and some states in its war in Gaza.

The conflict erupted after the Palestinian group Hamas's deadly October 7, 2023 attacks inside Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Hamas also abducted 251 people, 58 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel in response launched a relentless bombardment of the Gaza Strip and a ground operation that according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory has left at least 52,243 dead.

"Since 7 October 2023, when Hamas perpetrated horrific crimes against Israeli citizens and others and captured more than 250 hostages, the world has been made audience to a live-streamed genocide," Amnesty's secretary general Agnes Callamard said in the introduction to the report.

"States watched on as if powerless, as Israel killed thousands upon thousands of Palestinians, wiping out entire multigenerational families, destroying homes, livelihoods, hospitals and schools," she added.

'Extreme levels of suffering'

Gaza's civil defense agency said early Tuesday that four people were killed and others injured in an Israeli air strike on displaced persons' tents near the Al-Iqleem area in Southern Gaza.

The agency earlier warned fuel shortages meant it had been forced to suspend eight out of 12 emergency vehicles in Southern Gaza, including ambulances.

The lack of fuel "threatens the lives of hundreds of thousands of citizens and displaced persons in shelter centers," it said in a statement.

Amnesty's report said the Israeli campaign had left most of the Palestinians of Gaza "displaced, homeless, hungry, at risk of life-threatening diseases and unable to access medical care, power or clean water".

Amnesty said that throughout 2024 it had "documented multiple war crimes by Israel, including direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects, and indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks".

It said Israel's actions forcibly displaced 1.9 million Palestinians, around 90 percent of Gaza's population, and "deliberately engineered an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe".

Even as protesters hit the streets in Western capitals, "the world's governments individually and multilaterally failed repeatedly to take meaningful action to end the atrocities and were slow even in calling for a ceasefire".

Meanwhile, Amnesty also sounded alarm over Israeli actions in the occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank, and repeated an accusation that Israel was employing a system of "apartheid".

"Israel's system of apartheid became increasingly violent in the occupied West Bank, marked by a sharp increase in unlawful killings and state-backed attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinian civilians," it said.

Heba Morayef, Amnesty director for the Middle East and North Africa region, denounced "the extreme levels of suffering that Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to endure on a daily basis over the past year" as well as "the world's complete inability or lack of political will to put a stop to it".