JURIST - Paper Chase: Sudan announces plan to end state of emergency

[JURIST] Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir announced in a national broadcast Thursday a plan to end the country's 16-year state of emergency [Wikipedia backgrounder] by July 9. According to el-Brashir, the adoption of a new constitution and transitional government, following the January adoption of a peace treaty [BBC report] ending the 21-year civil war in southern Sudan, will end the state of emergency. The plan, however, will not include the state of emergency in Darfur [JURIST archive; Wikipedia entry], which the UN has called the world's worst humanitarian crisis prior to the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, or the eastern Red Sea and Kassala states, which have occasionally been the sites of anti-government protests and violence. The announcement was accompanied by the release of political prisoners, including Hassan Turabi, an Islamic ideologue once prominent in the el-Brashir's regime, but detained in 2004 for an alleged coup plot. AP has more.

For a one-stop snapshot of the latest legal news that matters, with breaking documents, new legal videos, live law-related webcasts, commentary by expert law professors and more - all updated through the day in real time, with no ads and no registration barriers - visit JURIST's homepage and check back often...