ICC Note

The hearing of 3 Sudanese Pastors and a Czech Christian aid worker ended with the prosecution accusing them of political crimes. Just recently international pressure has increased on behalf of the four in prison but the last hearing doesn’t show it has been effective. The accusations have only gotten worse. Our correspondents in East Africa are trying to get more information from a country that stifles exchange of information with the outside world.  

10/17/2016 Sudan (Sudan Tribune) – A Sudanese prosecutor Monday accused a Czech journalist and two Sudanese pastors of espionage and undermining the constitutional system, which all carry the death penalty.

Sudan’s National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) arrested the Czech Petr Jasek four days after entering the country last October in his possession two suitcases, one carrying a laptop, a mobile and a camera while the other one contained his personal documents.

In the trial which resumed Monday, the prosecutor told the court that Jasek wrote reports in 2010 to condemn Sudan and tarnish its image before front of the international community. He stressed that the country has been suffering so far from these reports which negatively impacted Sudan’s political, economic and security situations.

Prosecutor Abdel-Rahman Sotal-Arab told the criminal court in Khartoum on Monday that they seized an audio report by a member of Protection of Persecuted Christians Organization for which the Czech journalist works. In these statements, he stated that the genocide and destruction, happening in the Nuba Mountains area of South Kordofan State, is part of a systematic work that has started since the beginning of “Salvation Revolution”, the regime of President Omer al-Bashir.

Also, he told the tribunal that Jasek and some members of the group went to the Nuba Mountains area and photographed civilians. After what they sent these pictures abroad with captures claiming they are facing persecution, torture and forced conversion to Islam by the Sudanese army. The statements further say that the army bombards their areas inflecting heavy losses to lives and properties, he stressed.