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Envoy Booth: 'US picked sanctions relief conditions it could achieve progress in'
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May 15 - 2017 DABANGA SUDAN Over the next three months, the United States will decide whether Sudan has made sustainable progress on certain areas and it will remove 20-year-old economic sanctions imposed on Sudan. The criteria for the revoking in July, such as Sudan's ceasing of offensive military activity, were drawn up while Donald Booth was in charge as US Special Envoy to Sudan and South Sudan. “The five tracks are the beginning of a process, for the mutual confidence that was needed in order to address these very difficult issues of human rights and good governance,” the ambassador told Radio Dabanga in an exclusive interview broadcast this week – parts can be listened to online.
“Given the level of trust that the US and Sudan were starting from, we needed to have areas where it would be as clear as possible if indeed the agreed objectives were being met,” Booth explained the choice for the five tracks that are conditions for Sudan for the lifting of sanctions. A track which human rights organisations, activists and observers felt was missing in the plan was a discussion on human rights and good governance in Sudan. Booth: “We had to pick areas in which we could both measure and achieve progress.[...] It was also, frankly, a way to address and improve what had been tense relations between Sudan and Uganda.”
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Sudan files capital charges against Dr Mudawi, Idris
May 14 - 2017 KHARTOUM On Thursday, the State Security Prosecution in Khartoum filed criminal charges against two human rights defenders detained since December last year. Some of the charges are punishable by death. Lawyer Nabil Adib, the head of the defence team, told Radio Dabanga from Khartoum that the prosecution charged Dr Mudawi Ibrahim and Hafiz Idris for undermining the constitutional order, inciting war against the state, espionage, inciting hatred against denominations, being members of criminal and terrorist organisations, and dissemination of false news.
“There is no evidence proving that the defendants have been involved in any of the six mentioned articles,” the lawyer said. The prosecution filing charges means the end of the investigation stage, more than five months after the well-known human rights activists have been detained by agents of the National Intelligence and Security Service. Dr Mudawi Ibrahim, a university professor and founder of the Sudan Social Development Organisation (SUDO), and Hafiz Idris, head of the Youth Association of the North Darfur camps for the displaced, spent time in a detention site and Kober Prison in Khartoum. A decision to release them on bail in March was cancelled last week for unknown reasons.
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