Rhino: Agencies – Sudanese police confirmed that the leaders and symbols of ousted President Omar al-Bashir’s regime have not left the country. They have been detained by the judiciary and prevented from travelling by the passport authorities, a senior official said.
Police spokesman Brigadier General Fath al-Rahman al-Toum told Asharq al-Awsat that the authorities will never allow those waiting in prisons and those fleeing conflict zones to leave Sudan.
Sources affiliated with the Islamist movement in Sudan had confirmed the smuggling of al-Bashir and his aides to a ‘safe place’ in a city in northern Sudan. They reported at the time that the smuggling operation was carried out by special forces of militant fighters affiliated with the Islamic Movement Organization and Islamist special forces, without the participation of the army, whose mission was limited to providing limited security for the operation.
The operation took place more than a month before the Sudanese army recaptured the radio and television headquarters in Omdurman, the second largest city in the capital Khartoum. The military move was seen as a cover to divert attention from the smuggling of leaders of the ousted regime accused of igniting the war in the country to return to power.
Omar al-Bashir, who was convicted of corruption and money laundering, was deported to Kober prison in Khartoum Bahri, while the outbreak of the war interrupted the trial proceedings against him and his associates in another case related to the planning and execution of his military coup in 1989 against a democratically elected government.
The Sudanese army had previously accused the RSF of releasing prisoners in all prisons in the capital Khartoum, but the director of prisons, Yasser Omar Abu Zeid, revealed in a press conference last Thursday in Port Sudan, east of the country, that the former regime detainees awaiting trial in Khartoum’s Kober Central Prison are 18 people, including ousted President Omar al-Bashir. He said they were released after contacting the head of the judiciary, writing personal pledges, announcing this to the public, and committing to return when notified. Al-Bashir and three senior leaders of his regime, namely his deputy Bakri Hassan Saleh, his defence minister Abdel Rahim Mohammed Hussein, and a member of the salvation regime, Major General Ahmed al-Tayeb al-Khanjar, were languishing in Alia Military Hospital, under the control of the army within the medical corps in Omdurman, when war broke out on 15 April last year between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
