Sudanese bury man apparently tortured during detention

Thousands of Sudanese on Tuesday attended the funeral service of a man who was apparently tortured to death this month at a detention center run by a paramilitary force whose members once belonged to a militia that rights groups say committed war crimes in Darfur. Bahaa el-Din Nouri, 45, was snatched on December 16 while sitting at a coffee shop in Khartoum by men wearing plain clothes and riding in a vehicle without license plates. His death sparked outrage across Sudan. Five days later, his body appeared at a hospital morgue in the city of Omdurman, just across the Blue Nile River from Khartoum. The family refused to take the body for immediate burial after seeing signs of apparent beating and torture, and asked for an autopsy to reveal the cause of death. Culture and Information Minister Faisal Mohammed Saleh said Nouri died while being interrogated by the Rapid Support Forces, a force comprised of former Janjaweed militiamen who executed a brutal crackdown in Sudan’s Darfur region in 2000s.