Int. Herald Tribune Paris, Friday, December 4, 1998

2 Sudan Priests Could Face

Crucifixion

By Karl Vick Washington Post Service

KHARTOUM, Sudan - When Pope John Paul II paid a

brief, cautious visit here five years ago, he summoned a

powerful metaphor for the persecution that Christians often

face under Sudan's aggressively Islamic regime, calling it ''a

particular reproduction of the mystery of Calvary.''

Now the Sudanese government is bringing the metaphor to

life by threatening a pair of Roman Catholic priests with

crucifixion.

The two priests, the Reverend Hillary Boma and the

Reverend Lina Tujano, are charged with setting off almost a

dozen bombs around Khartoum on June 30 in an alleged

plot to mar official celebrations marking the anniversary of

the 1989 coup that brought the National Islamic Front to

power.

If convicted, they and 18 co-defendants could be crucified,

under the medieval Islamic code that governs Sudan's legal

system.

The priests' trial - actually a court-martial, held at army

headquarters and closed to foreign journalists and diplomats

- has been denounced by international human rights groups

as a charade based on videotaped confessions very likely

produced under torture. Critics say that what the trial

actually lays bare are the fears harbored by the regime that

brought it.

Sudanese officials insist they have a genuine case, but

acknowledge it is one that combines a striking number of

the elements viewed as threatening to the government.

The largest Christian denomination in this majority-Muslim

nation of 32 million, the Roman Catholic Church has

steadily resisted the government's program of forced

Islamization. It also has endured the repercussions. Priests

report being stopped and interrogated by secret police on an

almost monthly basis. Also routine is the bulldozing - 30

times in the last eight years - of sanctuaries and schools

under the guard of truckloads of Sudanese soldiers.

The Catholic Church serves mostly people from the south of

Sudan, a black African, largely Christian region that has

been at war with the Arab, strongly Muslim north for 15

years.

All but two of the priests' 18 co-defendants are southerners

who, like an estimated 1.8 million others over the last 15

years, fled the fighting in the rural south and settled near

Khartoum.

The dusty shantytowns that harbor the transplanted

southerners, many containing makeshift churches, now

account for 40 percent of the Khartoum population,

encircling the capital in a pattern that looks something like a

noose to apprehensive government officials.

Last month, in a routine demolition of another sort,

government bulldozers rumbled over a squatter village in an

area of the capital known as Carton Kassala.

The timing of the bombings, independent observers say,

suggests the government planned them. The blasts, in the

middle of the night, injuring no one, occurred not only on

the anniversary of the 1989 coup, but also on the day the

president, Lieutenant General Omar Hassan Ahmad Bashir,

signed a constitution that apparently opened the door to

legal opposition parties. That is something Sudan has not

had since 1989.

One day before the devices exploded, a National Islamic

Front official warned of ''terrorist parties.'' Two days later,

General Bashir cited them in postponing the legalization of

parties.

Oct. 12.

''I don't want the Catholic Church to take it as a fight

between the government and the Catholic Church, '' said

Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail. ''If they know that

Father Hillary did it,'' he said, ''and they want to take it as a

political matter, then that will make it very difficult for

them later if they want to ask for forgiveness.''