Rhino: Agencies – The head of the Sudanese Observatory for Human Rights, legal expert Abdelsalam Sayed Ahmed, considered that there is a need to look at the context in which the amendment of the General Intelligence Service Law took place, saying to ‘Radio Dabanga’ that there is severe confusion in the amendment from a legal point of view. He attributed this to the fact that Article 37 of the constitutional document stipulates that the tasks of the intelligence service are to collect, analyse and present information to the responsible authorities.
He said that various amendments were made to the old 2010 law in July 2020, which cancelled some articles, such as Article 25 related to the authority to summon, investigate and search, Articles 50 and 51 related to arrest, detention and investigation, and Article 52 related to granting immunities.
He explained that the current amendment restored these articles to the 2010 law and that the confusion he referred to was evident in the wording by not referring to the 2020 amendments as if they had not been made before, and cancelled articles that had already been cancelled and restored the same old articles related to arrest and interrogation.
He concluded that the aim of all this is to try to tighten the security grip and have something effective for the General Intelligence Service to exercise its activity by arresting and summoning citizens without any judicial oversight.
He noted that the constitutional document was not cancelled as it should have been, but the head of the Sovereignty Council, Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, suspended seven articles and says that it is supposed to be the governing constitutional framework in terms of formality, but they are not committed to it Basically, it is known that the constitutional document came as a result of a political agreement between the Freedom and Change Bloc and the military component at the time. All the political clauses that were signed on the political agreement do not exist, and the articles that have been suspended have practically suspended the political agreement.