On May 10, Sudan released one of two church leaders who had been arrested and jailed in December.
Telahoon Nogose Kassa, 36, head of the Khartoum Bahri Evangelical Church, was asked to report to the National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS) headquarters on December 13, according to Morning Star News.
After reporting to the headquarters, he was arrested without charges and taken to a detention center in Khartoum. He was questioned for five days, according to church members, and believed to have been targeted for his relationship with a foreign missionary and his noncompliance to government takeover of his church’s property. There has been no official legal basis for his arrest.
It is not clear as to why Kassa was released. However, according to the 2010 National Security Act, NISS cannot detain suspects for over four and a half months without judicial review.
The other pastor, Rev. Hassan Abdelrahim Tawor, the vice-moderator of the Sudanese Church of Christ (SCOC), was arrested five days after Kassa’s arrest and still remains in custody.
Sudan remains a Country of Particular Concern by the U.S. State Department since 1999 and ranks number eight on Open Doors’ 2016 World Watch List of countries where Christians face persecution.
