A top Sudanese prosecutor on Monday said the authorities have discovered a mass grave in the southeast of the capital, Khartoum that is believed to contain the bodies of dozens of conscripts who tried escaping military service from a training camp in 1998, reported Reuters.
Public prosecutor Tagelsir al-Hebr said a committee tasked with investigating the killings at El Eifalun military camp found the mass grave in the past four days after hearing witness accounts. He added that some of the suspected killers belonging to the administration of Omar al-Bashir had fled. Bashir was ousted by the army last year following months-long, pro-democracy protests.
The Sudanese prosecutor said that the conscripts were shot while fleeing the El Eifalun camp fearing they would be sent to fight in a civil war between Bashir’s Islamist regime and rebels in southern Sudan. Poorly trained and equipped conscripts were sent into the bush fighting against the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA).
The students were also angry as their commanders refused to allow them to go home to celebrate a major muslim holiday, according to the prosecutor.
According to the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), the Sudanese opposition at that time, 74 student conscripts were shot dead by the soldiers, while at least 55 others drowned when their boat capsized on the Blue Nile River while trying to escape.
The NDA said that at least 261 recruits tried to flee the camp in total. The dead bodies of 12 students were handed over to their families and 117 others were buried in a mass grave on April 6, 1998. The Al-Bashir’s government had confirmed then that only 31 people died.
Wael Ali Saeed, a member of the Sudanese investigation committee, said the grave was exhumed and now the committee will continue to work with forensic authorities and examine the evidence.
