A Sudanese doctor was jailed from Sunday to Wednesday night (December 10) after authorities learned he was a Christian, sources said.
In Ad Damazin, the capital of south-eastern Sudan’s Blue Nile state, Yagob Jibril Grademare went to the state civil registry office on Sunday (December 7) to obtain a national number for his niece, said another doctor, whose name is withheld for security reasons.
Officials from one of the State Security Cells – a unit made up of military, police and intelligence agents accused of arbitrary arrest, torture and forced disappearances – learned of the religious designation on his identity card and asked him why he was a Christian, the sources said.
Grademere, who is not a convert from Islam, told Muslim officials that he had been a Christian for a long time. Angered by his answers, police officers detained him for questioning, resulting in the security cell jailing him for three days and denying him access from his family, officials said.
“His brother went this morning (Wednesday, December 10) but he was not allowed to visit,” he said.
As the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) battles the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), authorities have set up security cells with broad arrest powers in most provinces. The cell is accused of targeting people suspected of collaborating with the RSF.
According to the Sudan Tribune, a rights group called Emergency Lawyers described solitary confinement as a “tool of repression and intimidation” and claimed that some arbitrarily arrested prisoners were released due to poor health, went on trial, or died in custody, while others were later found dead.
Grademare, who was originally from Senar province and worked as a doctor, told interrogators that he worked in Blue Nile province before moving to Saudi Arabia. He works as a doctor in Saudi Arabia and returned to Blue Nile last month to spend Christmas with his family.
On Wednesday (December 10), Grademare confirmed her detention and release that night on her Facebook page. He posted that he was asked about his identity and background upon his return from the civil registrar’s office.
“I want to thank everyone who prayed for me while in custody,” he wrote.
The situation in Sudan has worsened since a civil war broke out between the RSF and SAF in April 2023. According to Open Doors’ 2025 World Watch List (WWL) report, increasing numbers of Christians have been killed, sexually assaulted and their homes and businesses attacked in Sudan.
“Christians of all backgrounds are trapped in the chaos and unable to escape. Churches are shelled, looted and occupied by the warring parties,” the report said.
RSF and SAF are both Islamist groups that attack displaced Christians for supporting the other country’s fighters.
According to the Joshua Project, Sudan is 93% Muslim, with 4.3% of the population practicing traditional ethnic religions and 2.3% Christians.
The conflict between RSF and SAF, which shared military rule in Sudan after the October 2021 coup, has terrorized civilians in Khartoum and elsewhere, killing tens of thousands of people and displacing more than 12 million people inside and outside Sudan’s borders, according to the United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights (UNCHR).
SAF General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and then-vice president and RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo were in power when civilian parties agreed in March 2023 on a framework to re-establish a democratic transition the following month, but disagreements over the structure of the military stalled final approval.
Mr. Burhan aimed to bring the RSF, a militia with roots in the Janjaweed militia that helped quell former strongman Bashir’s rebels, under regular military control within two years, while Mr. Dagoro intended to accept integration within 10 years.
Although both military leaders have Islamist backgrounds, they seek to present themselves to the international community as champions of religious freedom and democracy.
Open Doors’ 2025 World Watch List (WWL) ranks Sudan fifth among the 50 most difficult countries to become a Christian, down from eighth the previous year. Sudan fell out of the top 10 of the WWL list for the first time in six years when it was ranked 13th for the first time in 2021.
After two years of progress in religious freedom in Sudan since the fall of Bashir’s Islamic dictatorship in 2019, the military coup on October 25, 2021 brought back the specter of state-sponsored persecution. After Bashir was ousted from power after 30 years in April 2019, the Interim Civil-Military Government succeeded in revoking some Sharia (Islamic law) provisions. The law prohibited labeling any religious group as “infidel” and effectively repealed the apostasy law, which made leaving Islam punishable by death.
The October 25, 2021 coup left Christians in Sudan concerned that the most repressive and harsh aspects of Islamic law would be reinstated.
In 2019, the U.S. State Department removed Sudan from its list of countries of particular concern (CPC) that commit or tolerate “systematic, persistent, and egregious violations of religious freedom,” and elevated it to its watch list. Sudan was designated as a CPC from 1999 to 2018.
In December 2020, the State Department removed Sudan from its special watch list.
