A Sudanese court has sentenced to death a paramilitary officer charged with killing a protestor during a deadly breakup of a protest camp in the capital, Khartoum, in 2019.
Youssef Mohieldin al-Fiky, a major with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, was on Monday found guilty of ramming a protester with his car as security forces were dispersing a sit-in outside the military headquarters.
The protester, Hanafy Abdel-Shakour (22), was one of over 120 people killed during the brutal crackdown on demonstrators in Khartoum and elsewhere in Sudan that June.
The incident occurred two months after the military ousted then-President Omar al-Bashir amid a public uprising against his nearly three-decade autocratic rule.
According to the state-run SUNA news agency, the trial had started more than a year later, in July 2020, in Khartoum’s Judicial and Legal Science Institute.
Judges held 26 hearings before their ruling on Monday. The ruling can be appealed before a higher court.
Meanwhile, on 1 August 2018, members of Zimbabwe’s elite military unit, the Presidential Guard shot dead six people during election-related protests in central Harare.
The Motlanthe Commission, which was established to investigate the killings, recommended that those found guilty should be prosecuted.
However, almost three years later, no one has been made to account for the cold-blooded murders of unarmed civilians.
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