A Comment on El-Affendi’s Article, "Mahmoud Taha: Heresy and Martyrdom"

Who is El-affendi?

Abdelwahab Ahmed El-affendi has been a member of the MBs since he was in High School. During his study in Khartoum University in the seventies he was an active participant in all their actions including violence against other students. When the MBs made their coup against the democratic regime, assumed power in June 1989, and declared the government of Ingaz , El-affendi supported it and received its promotion of being the Communication attaché at the Embassy of Sudan in the UK. During that period (1990-1994), El-affendi was not just carrying his diplomatic career professionally. Following his hidden agenda, he was also denying and justifying the awful crimes of the government of Ingaz with extremely exaggerated bias. At that time the Ingaz government established special facilities equipped with unimaginable tools for torturing political detainees. The Sudanese called these prisons the “ghost houses”. Some people died under excessive torture; others were paralyzed, some lost sight and hearing, and some women and men were humiliatingly raped. The most famous case was that of retired Brigadier Mohammed Ahmed El-rayah. He was brutally tortured and raped in the “ghost houses” and transferred to different remote prisons in the west and east of Sudan. He wrote ( From my prison at Sawakin I wrote a complaint to the Ministry of Justice with a copy to the president, the Chief of the Parliament, and the Head of Human Rights Committee in the Parliament describing the atrocities and torture I went through supported with medical reports. This complaint was leaked outside the prison; and many human rights organizations high lightened it. The British House of Lords got interested, and contacted the Embassy of Sudan in UK. El-affendi at that time was the spokesman at the Embassy in London. At first he told them that my case is now under investigation by the highest authority; although he knew that the case was not even opened. When the House of Lords insisted to know the results, El-affendi told them that the person who raised the complaint admitted that he was lying. I have read the correspondence between El-affendi and the House of Lords in the office of Lord Avebury, the Head of the Human Rights Committee in the House of Lords. Later, after El-affendi became one of the critics of the Ingaz, I read an article in which he admitted that there has always been torture and some of his relatives have been tortured by the Security Apparatus…)(Sudanile 5/4/2007).
What is peculiar about El-affendi, is that he never thinks of apology. He moved from government seats, to opposition seats, without a blink of an eye. When he changed his skin and adopted a new discourse to defend the victims instead of cheering for the executioner, he never tells those victims why he was supporting their executioner before, or why he is defending them now. In his critique to the government of Ingaz he concentrated on their new crimes. He never mentioned the awful crimes, which happened during the period in which he was a member of the MBs and an employee for the Ingaz. As part of the regime, when Ingaz government falls, he will be one of the fugitives.