On 27 April 2016 Mohamed Al-Sadiq was shot dead  in Omdurman Al-Ahlia University, he was just 20 years old. Al-Sadiq was attending a forum of the Association of Nuba Mountains Students Union.  The meeting was disrupted  by students aligned with the ruling National Congress Party(NCP) and supported by security forces who forced the activists outside before opening fire. Al-Sadiq was shot in the heart and died at the scene. He is survived by his four younger siblings and his mother and father.

Al-Sadiq was an active participant in the Nuba Mountains Students Union, a group with branches in several Sudanese universities that advocates for the rights of students from the Nuba minority. These students are often discriminated against by university authorities and are targeted and labelled as terrorists for organising Nuba cultural events. At the forum on 27 April the group condemned the murder by security forces of another Nuba student – Abubakar Hassan – the previous month, as well as the forced dispersal of protests at Khartoum University.

Students from Sudan’s conflict-affected Darfur and the Nuba Mountains remain under the microscope, as they are seen by the authorities as a support base for rebel groups. After the attack, rather than pursuing the assailant, authorities arrested two other members of the Union who had attempted to help Al-Sadiq for rioting and public nuisance charges. Thousands of people attended Al-Sadiq’s funeral in Omdurman. His mother stated“I want the Sudanese people to stand by me. I want them to help me get retribution for my son and find justice.”