Insignia of the Sudanese Armed Forces. (Creative Commons)
JUBA, South Sudan (Morning Star News) – Intelligence agents of the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) on Jan. 14 arrested and tortured at least seven Christians in Shendi, about 150 kilometers (93 miles) northeast of Khartoum, sources said.
The members of the Sudanese Church of Christ had sought refuge in areas controlled by the SAF from the military fighting in Khartoum, but upon arrival in Shendi, River Nile state, they were arrested by personnel from Military Intelligence (MI), according to the Sudanese Christian Youth Union.
MI agents accused the Christians of supporting the rival paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and receiving stolen money, with the Christians denying both allegations. The youth union asserted that the false accusations were an excuse to arrest the Christians, and an attorney following the case said authorities tortured them into confessing.
The Christian attorney, Shinbago Mugaddam, said the seven young Christians were denied legal aid, tortured and taken to a sham trial on the same day as their arrest.
“They were arrested by the army intelligence and were subjected to beatings and interrogations,” Mugaddam, following the case from another country as a refugee from the war, told Morning Star News. “A case was opened against them where the complainant and the witnesses for the accusation were all members of the armed forces. The court did not ask them whether they needed a lawyer or had witnesses to deny this incident, knowing that they were beaten and forced to confess and provide evidence against themselves.”
The accusers and the witness were all from Military Intelligence, and they forced the Christians to plead guilty against their will, he said.
“These youths were tried under Article 174 of the Sudanese Criminal Code of 1994 relating to theft in a summary trial in the Shendi Court, River Nile state, where the conditions for a fair trial were not met,” Mugaddam said.
The Union of Sudanese Christian Youth condemned the arrests and called for their immediate release. Describing the arrests as a violation of human and religions rights in Sudan, the body urged all right groups, regional and international organizations to intervene and protect those who have jailed without evidence.
“We in the Sudanese Christian Youth Union hereby condemn these violations that are based on the religion, color and ethnicity” reads the statement issued on Turesday (Jan. 21).
In October 26 Christians were arrested by Military Intelligence in Shendi after fleeing areas under RSF control in Khartoum.
Sudan’s military-led government in May approved a law restoring broad powers and immunities to intelligence officers that had been stripped after the ousting of President Omar al-Bashir in April 2019. The General Intelligence Service (GIS) Law (2024 Amendment) empowers intelligence officers to summon and interrogate individuals, conduct surveillance and searches, detain suspects and seize assets, according to the Sudan War Monitor.
The amendment granted extensive immunity, shielding agents from criminal or civil prosecution without the approval of the head of GIS. In capital punishment cases, it gave the director authority to form a special court.
“Any act committed by any member of the agency in good faith during or because of the performance of his job duties, or the performance of any duty imposed on him, or from any act issued by him under any authority authorized or granted to him under this law, shall not be considered a crime,” the law’s Article 52 states, according to the Sudan War Monitor.
Sudan was ranked No. 5 among the 50 countries where it is most difficult to be a Christian in Open Doors’ 2025 World Watch List (WWL), down from No. 8 the prior year.
Conditions in Sudan worsened as civil war that broke out in April 2023 intensified. Sudan registered increases in the number of Christians killed and sexually assaulted and Christian homes and businesses attacked, according to the WWL report.
“Christians of all backgrounds are trapped in the chaos, unable to flee. Churches are shelled, looted and occupied by the warring parties,” the report stated.
Since April 2023 militants of the paramilitary RSF have been battling the SAF, and each Islamist force has attacked displaced Christians on accusations of supporting the other’s combatants.
The conflict between the RSF and the SAF, which had shared military rule in Sudan following an October 2021 coup, has terrorized civilians in Khartoum and elsewhere, killing tens of thousands and displacing more than 12.36 million people within and beyond Sudan’ borders, according to the U.N. Commissioner for Human Rights (UNCHR).
The SAF’s Gen. Abdelfattah al-Burhan and his then-vice president, RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, were in power when civilian parties in March 2023 agreed on a framework to re-establish a democratic transition the next month, but disagreements over military structure torpedoed final approval.
Burhan sought to place the RSF – a paramilitary outfit with roots in the Janjaweed militias that had helped former strongman Omar al-Bashir put down rebels – under the regular army’s control within two years, while Dagolo would accept integration within nothing fewer than 10 years.
Both military leaders have Islamist backgrounds while trying to portray themselves to the international community as pro-democracy advocates of religious freedom.
Sudan had dropped out of the top 10 of the WWL list for the first time in six years when it first ranked No. 13 in 2021.
Following two years of advances in religious freedom in Sudan after the end of the Islamist dictatorship under Bashir in 2019, the specter of state-sponsored persecution returned with the military coup of Oct. 25, 2021. After Bashir was ousted from 30 years of power in April 2019, the transitional civilian-military government had managed to undo some sharia (Islamic law) provisions. It outlawed the labeling of any religious group “infidels” and thus effectively rescinded apostasy laws that made leaving Islam punishable by death.
With the Oct. 25, 2021 coup, Christians in Sudan feared the return of the most repressive and harsh aspects of Islamic law. Abdalla Hamdok, who had led a transitional government as prime minister starting in September 2019, was detained under house arrest for nearly a month before he was released and reinstated in a tenuous power-sharing agreement in November 2021.
Hamdock had been faced with rooting out longstanding corruption and an Islamist “deep state” from Bashir’s regime – the same deep state that is suspected of rooting out the transitional government in the Oct. 25, 2021 coup.
The U.S. State Department in 2019 removed Sudan from the list of Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) that engage in or tolerate “systematic, ongoing and egregious violations of religious freedom” and upgraded it to a watch list. Sudan had previously been designated as a CPC from 1999 to 2018.
In December 2020, the State Department removed Sudan from its Special Watch List.
The Christian population of Sudan is estimated at 2 million, or 4.5 percent of the total population of more than 43 million.
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