The death of a number of victims in the demonstrations rejecting the decisions of the Commander of the Sudanese Armed Forces, Lieutenant-General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, raised concerns and questions about who fired the bullets at the demonstrators. At a time when the police denied this, the demonstrators blamed them, while independent investigation committees were absent.
A number of deaths and hundreds of injuries occurred as a result of the protests that took place in the Sudanese capital (Khartoum) after the army chief, Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan declared last Monday a state of emergency, dissolved the Sovereignty Council and Ministers, and suspended some articles of the constitutional document that govern the transitional period.
The first day after the declaration of the state of emergency witnessed popular protests that were able to bypass the barriers placed by the army forces in front of the General Command in central Khartoum.
Gatherings and novels
Military forces fired live bullets at the expanding gatherings of protesters;
As a result, 8 protesters were killed and more than 100 were injured to varying degrees.
The student at the University of Khartoum Maryam tells Al Jazeera Net what happened, and says that heavy bullets were fired at the protesters from the direction of the General Command, and added that army forces surrounded the female students' residence near the headquarters of the General Command, and prevented everyone from leaving.
She said that a number of student dormitories were stormed by some regular forces after the students joined the protesters.
For her part, a member of the Sudanese Doctors Syndicate, Howaida Muhammad Al-Hassan, told Al Jazeera Net that 8 people were killed, and that the number of wounded exceeded 40 as a result of the use of bullets and violence, and the authorities did not form investigation committees to reveal who fired the bullets.
Warning and victims
On the eve of this October 30 million, which was launched by the Sudanese Professionals Association and the Forces for Freedom and Change-Central Council to demand a return to the path of democratic transition, officials in several countries, including the US Secretary of State, the European Union’s foreign relations official, and regional and international organizations, warned against using violence towards Peaceful protesters, and Al-Burhan pledged in statements not to use violence against the demonstrators as long as they are committed to peace.
But in the locality of East Nile (northeast of Khartoum), the situation was different after the attempts of the protesters from East of the Nile to cross the Al-Manshiya Bridge to Khartoum, and the regular forces responded to these attempts with tear gas and live bullets, causing a large number of injuries among them.
This was confirmed by Howaida Muhammad al-Hassan to Al-Jazeera Net, and she said that more than 180 injuries were recorded in East Nile Hospital with live bullets and tear gas, including two injured in critical condition, and attributed the failure to include these injuries in the Central Committee statement to the communication interruption.
statement and clarification
For its part, the Sudanese police issued a statement denying that they fired live bullets at the protesters, and said that one of its employees was shot, and the police used to clarify their positions in dealing with abuses according to the law that grants them this right.
Legal Adviser Moaz Muhammad Ahmed told Al Jazeera Net that the police's handling of the demonstrations is governed by laws that prohibit the use of live bullets except by order of the prosecutor accompanying the force.
He added that it was unlikely that the police had shot the protesters in the recent demonstrations, and said that the question that needs to be answered is: Who is shooting at the protesters?
For his part, a leader of the movement in the city of Bahri (north of Khartoum) accused the Security and General Intelligence Service and the Rapid Support Forces of using live bullets to kill protesters.
He said that the police had not used bullets in the recent protests, and that the army had stayed out of the events.
denial and justification
On the other hand, political activist Khalifa Kemir denied the hypothesis that security forces or Rapid Support Forces had fired bullets.
He told Al Jazeera Net that the area in which the shooting was launched yesterday, Saturday, and led to the killing of 3 protesters, was near the main center of the Sudan Liberation Movement led by Minni Arko Minawi in Omdurman, and said that what happened was a repetition of the shooting that occurred in the October 21 demonstration. The first is in the same area.
Dozens of people have been killed and hundreds wounded since the start of the December 2018 revolution, and Sudanese courts have sentenced security officials to death, in addition to other court rulings, after convicting them of killing protesters.
The dissolved government, headed by Abdullah Hamdouk, formed a committee headed by the lawyer Nabil Adeeb, to investigate the events of the dispersal of the sit-in of the General Command on the 3rd of June 2019, which killed more than 100 people and hundreds of wounded and missing.
The work of the committee remained idle without revealing the perpetrators, and these are issues referred to by the commander of the Sudanese army, Al-Burhan, who promises to provide all support to the committee to detect the perpetrators.