Two prominent Sudanese political figures who held top positions in the civilian administration before a military takeover in October have been arrested, their Forces of Freedom and Change (FFC) coalition said in a statement on Wednesday. The arrests mark an extension of a crackdown on critics of the military and follow those of dozens of activists linked to a protest movement against the October 25 coup.
The two officials detained, Khalid Omer Yousif and Wagdi Salih, had previously been involved in a task force that seized property and fired bureaucrats linked to the regime of Omar al-Bashir, who fell to a popular uprising in 2019. Yousif also served as a cabinet minister in a civilian government under a power-sharing agreement between the military and the FFC. Across Sudan, some 105 people were being held without charges over political activity, most of them members of local resistance committees detained in Khartoum’s Soba prison, Samir Sheikh Idris, a spokesman for an activist lawyers’ group, told the Reuters news agency on Wednesday. Some 2,000 people had been detained and released on bail in connection with demonstrations since the coup, Idris said.
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