Eight hung for burning down Khartoum Police Station

Eight people were hanged on Thursday, 14th January 2010, in the Sudanese capital Khartoum for their role in the destroying of a police station in Khartoum and the death of police officers inside the station. Those executed were of Darfuri and Southern Sudanese origin. They were accused of murdering the police officers and burning the police station down in 2005 after government armed forces were sent in to evict a slum.The slum residents however claim the convictions were false and that those executed were innocent and simply taken from their homes by the government intelligence services for alterior motives. They claim that there was no notice given for the slum eviction and they woke to tanks and grenades flying with soldiers shooting randomly at protesters. "We were forced to protest when a police officer shot a seven year old boy three times in the head", said Mr. Mile Michael, a South Sudanese living in the area since 1986.

Following the death of the young boy, the slum dwellers burnt down the police office in the area killing some of the officers with machetes and knives in a revenge attack. "We all participated in the burning of the police office because they deceived us that they would support us in resisting the soldiers but they were the first to kill our children, so we were willing to sacrifice ourselves for our children", Ibrahim Musa said while trying to control tears from rolling down. The widow of the executed prisoner, Hamed Abdullah, said she was called in the morning from the prison to speak for the last time to her husband but she refused, as she realised she could not change the situation. Slums in the Khartoum area are usually inhabited by South Sudanese and Darfuris, non-Arabs who live in abject poverty and are often forced to turn to crime to survive. Both groups feel that their rights are not respected by the Northern Arab Khartoum Government and claim they are scapegoated often for crimes in Khartoum, allowing the real criminals to run free.