SUDAN. DETAINEES SUFFER ARBITRARY EXECUTION, HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH

September 8, 2005: the Sudanese government has executed prisoners who were minors at the time of their arrest, Human Rights Watch said. Human Rights Watch called on the Sudanese government to commute death sentences for all those sentenced to death, estimated at more than 300 persons, instead of executing them before the new government had time to form. New parliamentarians had only been appointed a week previously.
The group said that Mohammed Jamal Gesmallah and Imad Ali Abdullah, both in their twenties, were executed on August 31 in Khartoum’s Kober Prison. According to their families, they were 16 and 17 years old at the time of the crimes for which they were punished.
“Sudan has incorporated the Convention on the Rights of the Child and other human rights treaties into its interim national constitution,” said Peter Takirambudde, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “But such steps will be meaningless if Sudanese citizens continue to suffer arbitrary arrests, torture and death sentences after unfair trials.” (Sources: Scoop.co.nz, 08/09/2005)