The Accused Privacy Rights in the Sudanese Legal System

Adam Mohamed Ahmed Abdelhameed,Parviz Bagheri,Kamal Halili Hassan

doi:10.5539/jpl.v12n1p74

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to discuss the rights of the accused person in the Sudanese legal system. Similar with other criminal justice systems, the Sudanese law do provide rights for the accused person to enable him or her to defend him or herself. These rights are considered as the core idea behind the thinking of human rights in the criminal proceedings. However the problematic issue here is to what extent does Sudanese law provide and protect the accused right especially the privacy right. It is also pertinent to balance the law enforcement interest in evidence collection in criminal proceedings with the privacy right of the accused in the Sudanese legal system. We found that there are evidence of privacy right protection on the accused within the Sudanese legal system. The result of this research shows that in Sudan, the privacy right was provided for the first time at the constitutional level in the T1973 Constitution (Articles 42 and 43). It has later received recognition in the 1985 Transitional Constitution (Articles 24 and 30), the 1998 Constitution (Article 29) and the 2005 Interim National Constitution (Article 37). At the statutory level, legislative protection is given to this right in the Penal Code 1991 (Section 166), the Code of Criminal Procedure 1991 (Sections 86 through 95) and the Informatic Offences (Combating) Act 2007 (Sections 16 and 6). The method adopted in this article is a qualitative content legal analysis of primary and secondary data obtained from legislation, case-law and various literature.

Highlights

The development of penal laws in Sudan brought the current Code of Criminal Procedure (CCP) into practice, which was enacted in 1991
Some of the rights of the accused person extend through the whole process of the criminal proceedings while other rights are limited to a certain stage or stages of the criminal proceedings
The country is considered by the Interim National Constitution (INC) as being multi-religious with Islam been the religion of the majority, all social ties and activities are made under this large religious umbrella

Summary

Introduction

The development of penal laws in Sudan brought the current Code of Criminal Procedure (CCP) into practice, which was enacted in 1991. In this law, the rights of the accused including one’s privacy right in the process of evidence collection in criminal proceedings are clearly provided. Some of the rights of the accused person extend through the whole process of the criminal proceedings while other rights are limited to a certain stage or stages of the criminal proceedings These include the due process of the law, the presumption of innocence, the right to be informed of the grounds of arrest, the right to counsel, the right to a speedy trial and the right to call a witness, to mention a few. The discussion in this article will focus on the right to silence and the privilege against self-incrimination as examples to other rights (O’Sullivan, 2007; Seidman & Stein, 2000)

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