Samar Merghany, victim of torture and complicity of the prosecution against her

Samar Merghany Ibnoaf, is a 23 years old pharmacist who was a victim of brutality of Sudanese police and security forces. Samar was arrested on Friday, September 24^th in Alsafia neighborhood, Khartoum North, because of filming a protest and the shooting of a young protester. She was taken to the Alsafia Police Station and was beaten, tortured, harassed her and threatened with rape. She was insulted and hit with rifle butts until she lost consciousness. The police inspected her cell phone and seized it. She was released after more than half a day. She didn’t know that a report was opened against her.

Samar and her family hired a lawyer to file her complaint to general prosecution against Alsafia Police Station. Attorney Manal Khogali was in charge of that case. She filed the complaint and a prosecutor general transfer Samar to the hospital for a medical examination to prove the torture she was subjected to. After the general prosecution received the medical report, the prosecutor general opened a case and referred it to Alsafia Police Station for investigation. Attorney Manal objected since that police station is the defendant, and she request to report to be investigated by another police station. The prosecutor general denied her objection to refer the report to another police station but under her insist; the report was referred to Police security Department. This department is responsible of investigating the accusations against official police members.

Again, attorney Manal objected since she had an experience with that department last year. (During the protests and confrontations, summer 2012, attorney Manal represented Sara Nogd Allah who opened a police report against some police members who fired ammunition and tear gas inside her house. At that time the police security department refused to interrogate any police officials). Back to Samar’s case, when attorney Manal told the prosecutor general about that experience, he was told to try her luck with them this time. As Manal expected, the police security department refused the request to investigate the case or direct the case to any other department to do so. They told her only Alsafia Police Station will do the investigation. Also, they abstained from giving her a written statement about their decision.

Attorney Manal along with Samar and the family went to the superior prosecutor to keep him him posted with what happened with the prosecutor general and the police security department, and to ask him to intervenes and refer the report to another destination rather than Alsafia Police Station. He told Manal literally “I don’t know what to do”. “With your authorities, it’s your duty to investigate the report”, Manal replied.  He told her to accept to go to Alsafia Police Station, and his excuse not to do the investigation himself was that he doesn’t want to waste his day in one case while he has many other cases to work on. Manal asked again for a written statement about his abstention of investigating the case and refer it to Alsafia Police Station again. But he refused to give then any statement. 

Here Samar’s mother got frustrated and tried to convince the superior prosecutor by saying “she is a child and suffered from torture and harassment, so please do something positive and help us”. The superior prosecutor took the word “child” literally and said if she is a child then this case is a responsibility of the Family and Child Prosecution and the general one. Samar is 23 years old and she was standing in front of him at the time he was talking. Nevertheless, he took the word “child” seriously. Ironically, I was prosecuted by the same prosecution in 2005 when I was 20 years old for a fabricated case that even had nothing to do with childhood. 

Attorney Manal told him that was a metaphor she is not a real child look at her she is 23 years old, but he said although she is not a child but the Family and Child Prosecution can handle her case, so try to go there.

This is an obvious evidence that the superior prosecutor is confused and doesn’t know how to act, but he just want any way to let the general prosecution’s hand off the case. Here, it seems like all the procedures are taken against people who were arrested and detained during protests are political not legal.

In the meantime, a lawsuit was initiated against Samar based on the police report which was opened during her detention.  She was called to attend the first trial on Sunday, October 6^th. After they arrived to the court, they found that the file with charges against her had not arrived at the court. The trail was postponed to Tuesday, October 8^th. And on that day her lawyers didn’t know what the exact accusations against her, but seemed like riots and also having scandalous and inappropriate photos in her phone. The court ordered to see the content of her phone, but the police locked it with a passkey and couldn’t open it. Again, the court postponed the trail for one day to call an expert from Samsung Company to open the phone. On Wednesday, October 9^th, the expert said that the phone can’t be opened without losing all of its data. Hence, the court postponed the case until October 23^rd for pleading.

My interview with attorney Manal in Arabic can be found here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kLiEpLJHo4