CAIRO – Three decades ago, a little-known army officer named Omar Hassan al-Bashir seized power in Sudan, ushering in a long period of brutal rule that would push the sprawling African country into a series of destabilizing wars, paralyzing its economy. and the result in humiliating international isolation.
Mr. al-Bashir is now called to account for his actions.
The 76-year-old autocrat, who was ousted last year after street protests, was taken to a courtroom in Khartoum on Tuesday for trial for his role in the bloody 1989 coup that overthrew the democratically elected government of the prime minister. Sadiq al-Mahdi. Also on the pier were 27 of Mr. al-Bashir’s top officials, including former vice presidents, ministers, governors and military officers.
Al-Bashir, who was sentenced to two years in prison last year on separate corruption charges, faces the death penalty if convicted.
Armed policemen wielding batons and tear gas canisters were on duty outside the courthouse, where the accused were taken to cages for a brief hearing. Dozens of relatives gathered outside the building, shouting and shouting slogans like “God is great!”
The indictment is a rare case of a dictator forced to answer for the blow that catapulted him into power, even if in Mr. al-Bashir’s case, a key accomplice has already evaded justice. The Islamist cleric Hassan al-Turabi, widely regarded as the true architect of the 1989 coup d’état, and the power behind Mr. al-Bashir for many years until they had a fight, died in 2016 without trial.
For Mr. al-Bashir, this is one accusation among many. During last year’s corruption trial, he admitted to receiving $ 90 million in bribes from Saudi Arabia’s rulers. But the most serious charges have yet to be brought to court.
For more than a decade, the International Criminal Court in The Hague has sought Mr. al-Bashir for his role in the conflict in the western region of Darfur, where Sudanese troops and allied militias murdered, looted and raped in a campaign. years long ethnically driven. violence that resulted in several hundred thousand deaths.
The Hague court charged Mr. al-Bashir a decade ago on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity, and charged other high-ranking figures, including former defense minister Abdel-Rahim Muhammad Hussein, who was tried along with Mr. al-Bashir on Tuesday.
Although Sudan’s transitional government, which is jointly led by civilian and military leaders, indicated earlier this year that it was ready to send Mr. al-Bashir to The Hague, there has been little sign of that happening. Instead, the new administration appears to shy away from a trial against Darfur, likely because its own leaders may also face charges.
Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan, a powerful figure in the transitional government, leads the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, a group linked to some of the worst atrocity allegations in Darfur.
When Brigadier Commander Mr. al-Bashir took over in 1989, the country was in decline. The army was fighting a stubborn uprising in the south, and Mr. al-Mahdi’s elected government was unpopular and besieged.
After taking power, Mr. al-Bashir suspended Parliament and other state institutions, closed the Khartoum airport and announced the coup on the radio. Later, he embarked on a cruel purge of potential rivals, imposed Islamic law and introduced harsh laws that severely restricted freedoms for Sudanese, especially women.
It soon became clear that the ideological drive for the coup came from a small group of Islamists led by Mr. al-Turabi, a Sorbonne-educated scholar cleric who dreamed of leading a pan-Arab Islamist revival. Mr. al-Bashir had a reputation for being a malleable and less sophisticated figure.
“Bashir was the leader, but the Islamists were more powerful,” said Alex de Waal, a professor at Tufts University Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and an expert on Sudan. “They manipulated him.”
But Mr. al-Bashir surpassed ideologues in a series of power struggles that ended with Mr. Turabi’s imprisonment in 1999, leaving Mr. al-Bashir as the undisputed ruler of Sudan.
Sudan was Osama bin Laden’s home until 1996, when, under US pressure, Mr. al-Bashir was forced to expel the leader from Qaeda. Later, Mr. al-Bashir softened his Islamist fervor in favor of repairing relations with Sudan’s neighbors and, in 2005, reaching a historic peace agreement with the southern rebels that led to the independence of South Sudan in 2011.
Mr. al-Bashir’s iron grip collapsed in April 2019 when, after months of street protests sparked by the price of bread, his own army lieutenants decided that his government had become unsustainable and ousted him from power.
Mr. al-Bashir has dismissed the politically motivated charges of the 1989 coup: “a quintessential impeachment trial,” one of his lawyers told reporters in December, and images of Tuesday’s proceedings aired on television. state they focused on the judge and did not. Show the expelled autocrat in the packed room. However, for many Sudanese, it was also surprising to see former Vice Presidents Ali Osman Taha and Bakri Hassan Saleh on trial.
Without hearing statements or arguments, the judge adjourned the trial until August 11, when he said he would meet again in a larger room with more space for family members and defendants.
