Floggings, fines after price riots

Press, 1 April 1985, Page 6

Floggings, fines after price riots

NZPA-Reuter Khartoum Heavily-armed troops and police remained on the streets of Khartoum at the week-end and further arrests were made after two days of rioting. Troops and the police questioned pedestrians in the market on whether they were from Khartoum or migrants from faminestricken areas.

At least 100 migrants were taken to the police

headquarters to await deportation to their native regions, witnesses said. Nearly three million Sudanese have been driven from their homes by drought and large numbers have swarmed into Khartoum.

The police officials said many migrants seeking jobs and food were involved in two days of riots which erupted last Wednesday over President Field-Mar-

shal Jaafar Nemery’s decision to lift subsidies on food, petrol and other commodities.

The State-run daily, “AlAyyam,” quoted a senior police source as saying that 851 people out of 2264 arrested / had been flogged, fined or sentenced to jail after summary trials. President Nemery, in Washington for medical checks and talks with United States officials,

blamed the unrest on the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood and told Sudanese journalists accompanying him that the ringleaders had gone into hiding. Security officials say the authorities are hunting 17 leading Muslim Brothers, including two former members of the People’s Assembly (Parliament) and an ex-provincial minister. President Nemery purged

his administration of Brotherhood members earlier this month and ordered the arrest of 11 of its leaders on charges of plotting to overthrow him.

Among Brotherhood members already arrested are his former foreign policy adviser, Muhammed Hassan al-Tourabi, and former Internal Affairs Minister, Ahmed Abdul-Rah-man.