Sudan arrests 3 activist as pressure mounts on military

CAIRO — Sudanese information forces detained 3 salient pro-democracy figures, household members and activists said Wednesday, arsenic planetary unit mounted connected the country’s subject to locomotion backmost the coup it staged earlier this week.

The overnight arrests successful the superior Khartoum came a fewer hours aft the subject allowed deposed Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok and his woman to instrumentality home.

Hamdok, a erstwhile U.N. economist, was detained on with galore authorities officials and governmental figures erstwhile the subject seized powerfulness connected Monday.

The subject takeover threatens to halt Sudan’s fitful modulation to ideology which got nether mode aft the 2019 ouster of long-time ruler Omar al-Bashir and his Islamist authorities successful a fashionable uprising.

The caller strongman, Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, has pledged to clasp elections, arsenic planned, successful July 2023, and to name a technocrat authorities successful the meantime. But critics uncertainty the subject is superior astir yet ceding power to civilian rule.

The coup came conscionable weeks earlier Burhan was expected to manus implicit the enactment of the apical ruling body, the Sovereign Council, to a civilian. The assembly is made up of civilians and members of the military. Separately, Hamdok’s transitional authorities ran day-to-day affairs.

The activists taken overnight are Ismail al-Taj, a person with the Sudanese Professionals’ Association, the radical astatine the forefront of the protests that brought down al-Bashir; Sediq al-Sadiq al-Mahdi, a person successful Sudan’s largest governmental party, known arsenic Umma and member of Foreign Minister Mariam al-Mahdi; and Khalid al-Silaik, a erstwhile medial advisor to the premier minister. That’s according to Al-Silaik’s wife, Marwa Kamel, and activists Nazim Siraj and Nazik Awad.

Kamel said al-Silaik was detained moments aft helium gave an interrogation to Qatar-based outer broadcaster Al-Jazeera. In the interview, helium criticized the military’s takeover, calling Hamdok and his authorities the morganatic medication of Sudan.

“What Gen. Burhan did is simply a implicit coup ... People volition respond to this successful the coming days,” al-Silaik said.

The 3 person been outspoken critics of the subject takeover. Tens of thousands of Sudanese who took to the streets successful the past 2 days to telephone for the instrumentality of the Hamdok government. Security forces confronting protesters killed astatine slightest 4 radical and wounded implicit 140 others successful the past 2 days.

On Monday, Burhan, the caput of the military, dissolved the Sovereign Council and the transitional government, and declared a authorities of emergency. He alleged that the subject was forced to measurement successful to forestall the state from sliding into civilian war.

The takeover came aft weeks of mounting tensions betwixt subject and civilian leaders implicit the people and gait of Sudan’s modulation to democracy.