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Sudan
The Prison System
General supervision of the Sudan Prison Service was carried out
by the director general of prisons, who was responsible for the
country's central prisons and reformatories. Provincial authorities
managed detention centers and jails in their administrative jurisdictions.
The central prisons were Kober in Khartoum North, Shalla in Al
Fashir, Darfur State, and Port Sudan on the Red Sea. It was reported
that there were about 140 local prisons and detention centers
in the early 1990s.
Prison conditions were generally poor. Treatment of prisoners
varied widely, however. Some were restricted by shackles, while
others were allowed to return home at night. There were persistent
reports of beatings and other forms of mistreatment, including
torture, of detainees and other political prisoners in the central
penal institutions, although these were apparently inflicted by
security officials and not regular prison guards. After reports
appeared that detainees of the Bashir government were being subjected
to torture, Amnesty International was allowed to visit a select
group of prisoners at Kober, where prison conditions were reputed
to be the best in Sudan. Facilities at the large prison at Port
Sudan were spartan. Although treatment was not brutal, extreme
heat contributed to the harsh living conditions. The most primitive
conditions were said to be at Shalla. In general, political prisoners
welcomed transfer to prison to escape physical abuse from security
personnel.
Although conditions at prison hospitals were described as fair,
a number of political prisoners complained of being denied treatment
for medical problems. Trade unionists arrested after the 1989
coup and held at Kober Prison submitted a protest alleging the
denial of family visits and of adequate medical treatment, while
challenging the legal grounds for their arrests. In retaliation,
the government transferred many of them to Shalla Prison, 600
kilometers from Khartoum.
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Details on military units and equipment are available from The
Military Balance published annually by the International
Institute for Strategic Studies in London. Further information
on the sources of Sudan's arms can be found in Forecast International/DMS
Market Intelligence Report: Middle East and Africa. Reports
by two international human rights organizations give accounts
of the conflict in the south, the role of various militia groups,
and the abuses committed by all of the fighting units, especially
against the civilian population. These are Amnesty International's
Sudan: Human Rights Violations in the Context of Civil War,
published in 1989, and Africa Watch's Denying "The Honor of
Living:" Sudan, A Human Rights Disaster, published in 1990.
The Southern Sudan by Douglas H. Johnson provides a
concise account of the fighting in the south through 1988. The
section on Sudan by Gwynne Dyer in World Armies includes
an abbreviated history of the Sudanese armed forces until 1983.
Articles by John O. Voll in Current History in 1986 and
1990 discuss the record of military regimes in Sudan as alternatives
to civilian government.
United States-Sudanese military relations are recounted in Jeffrey
A. Lefebvre's "Globalism and Regionalism: U.S. Arms Transfers
to Sudan" in Armed Forces and Society. Information on
the criminal courts system and the record of the Bashir government
with respect to judicial processes and human rights can be found
in the annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices
published by the United States Department of State. (For further
information and complete citations, see Bibliography).
Data as of June 1991
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