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English edition -2nd quarter 1998
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Press release from CSI on July 7th
A Muslim tortured after he changed religion
| A Sudanese Christian convert from Islam, Mekki Kuku, has been severely
tortured and is now in Omdurman Prison on charges of having violated Sudan's
apostasy law. Mekki Kuku was arrested in June by Sudanese security officers
and was taken to Khartoum's Islamic Faith Research Centre - an Islamist
indoctrination centre - where he was placed in solitary confinement and
tortured. His interrogators combined the most brutal physical and psychological
abuse with the promise of financial and social rewards to induce him to
renounce his Christian faith.
Mekki Kuku, a black African primary school teacher from the Nuba Mountains in Central Sudan, refused to yield to torture and enticements. His life was saved by the intervention of Abel Alier, a former Vice-President of Sudan and leader of the opposition to Sudan's National Islamic Front (NIF). Following Mr Alier's protest to the Chief Justice Ahmed Hajj Ali, the torture sessions were suspended and Mr Kuku was transferred from the Islamic Faith Research Centre to Omdurman prison. He is due to appear in Court on July 23, 1998. If convicted of apostasy, Mekki Kuku would face the death sentence. He is married and has 10 children. The NIF regime has made apostasy from Islam a capital offence to strengthen its overall policies of Islamisation in Sudan. CSI has appealed to the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, Mrs Mary Robinson to seek the release of Mr Mekki Kuku from prison, and the repeal of the Government of Sudan's draconian apostasy law that violates the international instruments. CSI has also requested her to ask the Special Rapporteurs on Torture,
Religious Intolerance, and on Sudan, to make their own inquiries concerning
this tragic case.
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| For more information please call: CSI John Eibner or Gunnar Wielbalck
Tel 0041-1-9804700, Fax: 0041-1-9804715, e-mail: csischweiz@swissonline.ch |