A Sudanese court Sunday began the trial of four Sudanese protesters accused of killing a high-ranking police officer in January. The judge ordered a medical examination of the accused to investigate allegations they were tortured in jail and deferred the hearing to June 12.

The fatality took place in months of unrest following the October 25 coup headed by army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. The four accused were arrested and charged in January and have remained in custody since, to much disapproval. While the accused undertook a weeklong hunger strike in Khartoum’s Kober prison to protest inhumane treatment, police brutality and a lack of due process, hundreds of people rallied and protested against this arrest in Khartoum and demanded justice for the accused.

Following the overthrow of Omar al-Bashir, a two-year power-sharing agreement between the military and civilian factions came to an end with the coup. Since then, there have been huge weekly rallies against the coup in Khartoum. Hundreds of activists have been arrested and at least 98 people have been killed and over 4,300 wounded. According to the Central Committee of Sudan Doctors, security personnel have shot and killed many of them. Burhan, head of Sudan’s ruling sovereign council, has claimed that certain security personnel “misused” their guns during demonstrations, but no public prosecutions have been announced.

The Khartoum State Resistance Committees denounced the killing of two protesters on Saturday and called on “all comrades in the resistance committees and the forces rejecting the coup to intensify their efforts and reach the peak of the resistance and revolutionary action that leads to the overthrow of the coup.” UN ambassador for Sudan Volker Perthes also condemned the killing of pro-democracy protesters. He called on authorities to lift the state of emergency in place since October 25. Post this, Burhan lifted the state of emergency.