Khartoum - 

A senior and well-informed source at the Public Prosecution in Khartoum confirmed - to Al Jazeera Net - that members of the "Committee to Eliminate Empowerment and Dismantle the Omar Al-Bashir regime", who are arrested under Article 177/2 of breach of trust, which carries a penalty of death, may face 95 criminal cases, and the number of wanted persons may reach In it, there are 206 accused, including members of the commission or associated with its work.

The source explained that the detainees faced criminal proceedings under Article 177/2 of the Criminal Code of 1991 related to violating foreign exchange laws, violating financial and accounting procedures, violating the law against illicit and suspicious wealth, and others.

He added that the Public Prosecution is investigating the aforementioned reports, with the suspects enjoying all the rights stipulated in the law.

Yesterday, Wednesday, the Sudanese authorities detained the rapporteur of the Empowerment Removal Committee, Wajdi Saleh, and its Secretary-General, Al-Tayeb Othman, in addition to the former Minister of the Council of Ministers, Secretary-General of the Congress Party, Khaled Omar Youssef.

The Congress Party announced that a security force had arrested its Secretary General Khaled Omar Youssef from inside the party's headquarters, south of Khartoum (Reuters)

Legal action

The source - who asked not to be named because he is not authorized to speak to the media - explained that what happened was a legal procedure related to charges related to wasting and mismanaging public funds during the defendants' period of work in the committee, which is reviewed by a review committee that includes representatives of the prosecution, the Ministry of Justice and the Office of the Prime Minister. The general review, according to a decision issued by the President of the Transitional Sovereign Council, Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan.

The decision of the Audit Committee, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Finance, Abdullah Ibrahim, accused - in a press conference last week - the Empowerment Removal Committee of mismanaging public money and wasting it by “appointing managers of companies recovered from affiliated with the regime of ousted President Omar al-Bashir without notification and approval of the commercial registrar, and dividends were spent. These companies are responsible for the work of the frozen committee, in addition to their disposal of the recovered hotel and real estate rents.”

The decision of the Audit Committee indicated that they reviewed 24 out of 89 recovered companies, in which 1455 cars were seized at the companies’ headquarters and 124 cars were seized at the headquarters of the Empowerment Removal Committee, while 36 cars were lost, which are being searched, in addition to about 370 thousand dollars, including 131,000 dollars and gold bars. And 300 grams of gold was found in the house of a member of the Empowerment Removal Committee.

The well-informed legal source in the Public Prosecution Office in Khartoum did not rule out that the arrested leaders of the committee would be accused of charges related to the possession of weapons and ammunition, and he told Al Jazeera Net, "They are arrested by virtue of their responsibility for the committee's funds and headquarters, where weapons and ammunition were found, which is a crime punishable by law."

Al-Taher Abu Haja: The arrest of some members of the Empowerment Removal Committee took place according to judicial procedures and is not considered an arrest (Sudanese Press)

Malicious reports

On the other hand, lawyer Moez Hazrat described the procedures against the members of the Empowerment Removal Committee as "malicious", revealing that they had submitted a request to the prosecution to write off the case in the face of the detainees, and he said - to Al Jazeera Net - "We submitted yesterday - Wednesday - to the Public Prosecution a request to write off this malicious communication with distinction." And this is a complete return to the policies of the Bashir regime, "using the prosecution to liquidate the political rivalry."

And he continued, "If there was an accusation, it should be directed to the Ministry of Finance, which received all the money and companies recovered by the Empowerment Removal Committee, with a documented confession of the ministry, but more than that, Minister Jibril himself should have been the first accused in this communication, and not authorized for the complainants." .

While the rapporteur of the Audit Committee, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Finance, Abdullah Ibrahim, said that his committee found that “the Ministry of Finance has received 25 companies out of 127 companies that have been recovered, in addition to the Ministry receiving two of the work names out of a total of 54 work names, and it has also recovered 3147 plots of land and real estate, which have received The Ministry of Finance included only 9 real estate, and 3 farms out of the 90 agricultural plots that were returned.

arrest warrants

In turn, the media advisor to the President of the Sudanese Sovereign Council, Al-Taher Abu Haja, stated - today, Thursday - that the arrest of some leaders of the “Empowerment Removal” committee took place according to judicial procedures and is not considered an arrest.

Abu Haja said, "What happened in the face of some leaders of the suspended empowerment committee is an arrest warrant - according to reports - and not an arrest. The first is issued by the judicial authorities - whether the prosecution or the judiciary - while the second is issued by the security services."

For his part, the leader of the Sudanese Congress Party, Noureddine Salah El-Din, considered - in an interview with Al Jazeera Net - that these lawsuits and arrests are intended to break the thorns of the opponents of the "coup," and said that the former minister, Khaled Omar, "was arrested under an arrest warrant for only 3 days, and there is no charges against him, which means that it is a political arrest, in addition to the fact that the same method of arrest from within the meeting of the leaders of freedom and change after the meeting of the UN envoy Volker Peretz indicates that it is a political communication par excellence, because Khaled was a member of the Empowerment Removal Committee by virtue of his position as Minister of Cabinet Affairs and not in person".

In the same direction, the leader of the coalition, Yasser Arman, described the process of arresting the leaders of the Freedom and Change Alliance as a "political plot under a legal cover," and said - in the press conference held by the coalition - "the regime's behavior will greatly affect the position of the forces of freedom and change regarding dealing with With the initiative of the United Nations, especially since these developments come one day after the UN mission delivered the coalition’s vision to resolve the political crisis.”

While the head of the Sudanese Congress Party, Omar Al-Digair, said that "the Sudanese security forces were the ones who arrested the engineer Khaled Omar Youssef, and we have no news about his place of detention or the reasons that prompted the authorities to arrest him."

Al-Digair added - in a press conference for the leaders of the forces of freedom and change - that "the security and intelligence forces began launching large-scale arrest campaigns against Sudanese activists and the forces of the revolution, because they sensed the failure of their deliberately procrastinating policy towards the demands of the Sudanese people."

But the legal source familiar with the committee’s work in the Public Prosecution responded to that by saying, “The accused, the arrested, and the fugitives squandered money, and misused assets with a market value of billions of dollars, and the Audit Committee worked for 3 months until it reached the stage of criminal cases, and we are not politicians. Facts and evidence, we don't know the initiative, we don't know Volcker, but we only know the law of procedure and the criminal law."

Yasser Arman: The arrest of the leaders of the Freedom and Change Alliance is a political plot under a legal cover (Reuters)

It is noteworthy that Article 1772, according to which detainees were arrested from the suspended Empowerment Removal Committee and related to the public employee’s betrayal of the trust states: “A person who is entrusted with the possession or management of money is considered a perpetrator of the crime of breach of trust, and who, with bad intentions, denies, owns or transfers that money. To his benefit or the benefit of others or to waste it or dispose of it with obscene negligence in violation of the requirements of trust shall be punished with imprisonment for 7 years, and he shall also be punished with a fine, and if the offender is a public servant entrusted with the money in that capacity, he shall be punished with imprisonment for a period not exceeding 14 years or death.”

The frozen empowerment committee was working on dismantling the structure of the regime of ousted President Omar al-Bashir and its political, economic and social facades, and the committee says that it succeeded and was able to recover billions of dollars in state assets, as a holding company affiliated with the Council of the Ministry was scheduled to manage the refunds.

The review committee was formed - in accordance with the decision of its formation - due to the failure of the Appeals Committee of the suspended Empowerment Removal Committee to perform its work and the backlog of requests to review decisions.

Prior to the military measures taken by the Army Commander, Abdel-Fattah Al-Burhan, on October 25, the alternate head of the Empowerment Removal Committee, Muhammad Al-Faki Suleiman, complained that the Appeals Committee had not been formed due to what he described as the sluggishness of the military component in the Sovereignty Council at the time.

Under the Empowerment Removal Committee law, appeals against its decisions are made before the Appeals Committee, and then before a judicial circuit formed by the judicial authority.