Deputy head of Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North rebel group says he and colleagues were forcibly sent to Juba.
An opposition leader in Sudan says the country’s ruling military has forcibly removed him and two of his colleagues to neighbouring South Sudan, as protesters continued for a second day a nationwide civil disobedience campaign in the wake of a bloody raid on a protest sit-in.
The three deported men are part of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N), one of the country’s main rebel groups and part of an alliance pushing for a handover to civilian rule after the military deposed President Omar al-Bashirin April in the wake of mass protests
demanding his resignation.
Yassir Arman, the most prominent of the three men and the deputy head of the SPLM-N, was detained on Wednesday after returning from exile following al-Bashir’s removal.
The two others, SPLM-N Secretary-General Ismail Jallab and spokesman Mubarak Ardol, were arrested after meeting visiting Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, as he tried to mediate between the ruling Transitional Military Council (TMC) and civilian
opposition.
“I was deported in exile from Khartoum to Juba,” Arman told Al Jazeera by telephone on Monday from South Sudan’s capital. “It is against my will. I haven’t chosen that, together with my colleagues.
“I believe I have been deported because those who are ruling Sudan now, they don’t want a change of directions, they don’t want change,” he said.
Arman said his colleagues were with him and described their condition as “all right”.
“They are also not for these deportations … we are part of the political forces of Sudan and we have to stay there. Many of our colleagues are there. They deported us; they will not deport the whole organisation, they will not deport the Freedom and Change alliance.”
A statement from SPLM-N chairman Malik Agar said the three officials had been deported in a military plane to Juba.
