SUDAN has released more than 80 prisoners locked up for taking part in bread protests last month.

President Omar al-Bashir announced the release yesterday, according to his aide.

The Sudanese Communist Party (SCP) praised the “steadfastness of the political detainees” and the “pressure exerted by the solidarity movement inside and outside the country” for forcing the president’s hand.

It reported that prisoners shouted: “Freedom, justice, revolution!” as they walked out of Kober prison in Khartoum. The prisoners said they had been subject to physical and mental torture.

Among those released were Hanadi Fadl, a member of the SCP political bureau, several of the leaders of the Islamist Uma Party and women’s rights campaigner Amal Habani.

But many SCP leaders, including political secretary Muhammad Mukhtar al-Khatieb, are “still languishing in the jails of the dictatorship,” the party said, adding: “It is a clear sign that the regime is targeting our party.”

The SCP played the leading role in organising the January protests, sparked by the ending of subsidies that has forced up the price of bread and other necessities but with their longer-term roots in decades of International Monetary Fund-demanded free-market policies.

Opposition parties said several people were killed by the government’s violent suppression of the protests, while more than 300 were arrested in their aftermath.

SCP spokesman Fathi el-Fadl said: “We in the SCP, like the rest of our people, pledge to continue the fight to topple the regime and to demand the release of all political prisoners.”

He said that, while the release of some detainees was “a victory for the solidarity movement,” all “fraternal parties and friendly organisations” should continue their efforts to “demand the immediate release of the SCP leaders and members still in the hands of the dictatorial regime.”