Sudanese security agents have arrested family members of Maj. Gen. Bandar Ibrahim Abu El Baloul, who defected to the rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) in February.

The retired general, a native of Keilak near the South Sudanese border, was the head of the security committee in the South Kordofan parliament and held top military honors.

Abu El Baloul is one of the most prominent members of the Misseriya tribe to join JEM, a rebel group associated with the Sudanese Islamic Movement and active in Darfur and Kordofan.

Last week security agents arrested two family members of the general in Abu Jubeiha, South Kordofan, along with a third man who was working on a farm there and took them toward Kadugli, the state capital. 

Jibril Adam Bilal, the spokesman of JEM, told Radio Tamazuj on Friday that ‘militia and the security  service’ arrested the general’s son Abu Alama Bandar Ibrahim Abu El Baloul and his cousin Assadig Fadallah Abu El Baloul and ‘one of the people working on the farm’ called Idriss Musa Saleh.

“We call on the Sudanese government to release them unconditionally… this is not part of the Sudanese culture, because this was a civilian family living in Abu Jubeiha, they don’t have any connection to the armed activity, they are just civilians,” said the spokesman. 

The spokesman said the men were taken to Kadugli, but he said he was not sure in which prison specifically the men were being held.