Army to release detained civilian leaders in two days – Malik Agar

KHARTOUM – All the political detainees including Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok would be released within two days maximum, said Malik Agar a Member of the Transitional Sovereign Council in Sudan, on Tuesday.

In an interview with Aljazeera TV on Tuesday evening, Agar said he and his two colleagues of the Sudanese Revolutionary Front (SRF) Hadi Idris and Tahir Hajar are calling for dialogue between the political groups of the Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC) and the military component.

“Our position is that all the parties have to return to the negotiating table,” he said when he was asked about his position on the current crisis.

Agar who is also an FFC leading member said what happened on the 25th of October was a coup and the release of all the political detainees should be the first step towards a conducive environment for political dialogue.

He disclosed he met with Prime Minister Hamdok three times to discuss ways to settle the rift.

According to Agar, the coup leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan also did accept their request to release the detainees.

“We are in dialogue (with al-Burhan) to release all detainees and the military component says that they will be released after a day or two,” he said.

He stressed that the release of detainees is one of the needed measures to create a suitable atmosphere for dialogue.

“Nobody can dialogue from prison,” he said.

After the military takeover on October 25, Prime Minister Hamdok was in prison for some days before being placed under house arrest. Some of his advisers and cabinet members are in detention. Recently other political figures have been arrested.

The three leaders of armed groups who joined the Sovereign Council in line with the Juba Peace Agreement, Agar particularly, have been slammed for joining the new Sovereign Council formed after the military coup.

However, Agar said they use their legitimacy as peace partners to seek a way out from the ongoing crisis stressing they want to prevent the collapse of the country if the armed groups took part in the rift.

Regarding the protest movement, he said supporting the freedom of expression and against the use of violence to disperse the demonstrators.

During the interview, which was followed by many Sudanese, Agar repeated several times that “dialogue is the only alternative to settle the current crisis”.

The SPLM-N leader said he together with Idris and Hajar passed four hours with his comrade and SPLM-N Deputy Chairman Yasir Arman on Tuesday.

Also, Agar showed optimism saying that he has “the feeling” that the ongoing crisis would be settled soon.

“Returning to the Constitutional Document is probable,” he said, “Because it is a text that was negotiated and agreed by both sides”.

“The current situation is catastrophic but could turn into a benefit for the country if all parties sit at the negotiating table without preconditions,” he further emphasized.

Agar said he knows that there is anger everywhere in the country among the political and civil society groups as well as the military component but only dialogue allows to overcome the current crisis.

The Sudanese Professionals Association and Resistance Committees calls for demonstrations on November 17, as there are growing calls to continue the peaceful protests and to reject any compromise with the military component.