In August 2018, during the 30-year rule of Omar al-Bashir, the Darfur Bar Association stated the security services deliberately prosecuted students and held them under detention for long periods of time in order to discourage them from human rights related activities.[4] According to the DBA, the security services arbitrarily detained students, and after students had been tortured while in detention and been found "not guilty" in court, again arbitrarily re-arrested them. The DBA gave the example of five students of Sudan University, Alnilin University and Omdurman Ahlia University who were tortured using electric batons, tapes, racist insults, and were blindfolded for two days, and underwent the re-arrest procedure in June and July 2013. The five students were again found not guilty on 18 August 2013 by a Central Khartoum criminal court judge, Osama Ahmed Abdalla.