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 24th 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 6th.
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 8th.
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 9th, the expert said that the phone can’t be
opened without losing all of its data. Hence, the court postponed the case
until October 23rd for
pleading.
My interview with attorney Manal in Arabic
can be found here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kLiEpLJHo4
