Coup d'état (blue fatigue) in front of the
Republican Palace after the coup When he returned to Sudan as a colonel in the
Sudanese Army, al-Bashir led a group of army officers in ousting the unstable coalition government of Prime Minister
Sadiq al-Mahdi in a bloodless
military coup on 1989. He then became chairman of the
Revolutionary Command Council for National Salvation (a newly established body with legislative and executive powers for what was described as a transitional period), and assumed the posts of
chief of state, prime minister, chief of the armed forces, and
Minister of Defence. Subsequent to al-Bashir's promotion to the chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council for National Salvation, he allied himself with
Hassan al-Turabi, the leader of the
National Islamic Front, who, along with al-Bashir, began institutionalizing
Sharia law in the northern part of Sudan. Further on, al-Bashir issued purges and executions of people whom he alleged to be coup leaders in the upper ranks of the army, the banning of associations, political parties, and independent newspapers, as well as the imprisonment of leading political figures and journalists. On 16 October 1993, al-Bashir increased his power when he appointed himself
president of the country, after which he disbanded the
Revolutionary Command Council for National Salvation and all other rival political parties. The executive and legislative powers of the council were later given to al-Bashir completely. In the early 1990s, al-Bashir's administration gave the green light to float a new currency called
Sudanese dinar to replace the battered old
Sudanese pound that had lost 90 percent of its worth during the turbulent 1980s; the currency was later changed back to pounds, but at a much higher rate. He was later elected president (with a five-year term) in the
1996 national election, where he was the only candidate legally allowed to run for election.
Elections Omar al-Bashir was elected president (with a five-year term) in the 1996 national election In 1998, al-Bashir and the Presidential Committee put into effect a new constitution, allowing limited political associations in opposition to al-Bashir's
National Congress Party and his supporters to be formed. On 1999, al-Bashir sent troops and tanks against parliament and ousted
Hassan al-Turabi, the speaker of parliament, in a
palace coup. He was reelected by popular vote for a five-year term during the
2000 Sudanese general election. From 2005 to 2010, a transitional government was set up under a 2005 peace accord that ended the 21-year long
Second Sudanese Civil War and saw the formation of a power-sharing agreement between
Salva Kiir's
Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) and al Bashir's
National Congress Party (NCP). Al-Bashir was reelected president in the
2010 Sudanese general election with 68% of the popular vote; while Salva Kiir was
elected President of Southern Sudan. These elections were agreed on earlier in the 2005 peace accord. This was pushed further by the drilling and extraction of oil-
Tensions with Hassan al-Turabi In the mid-1990s, a feud between al-Bashir and al-Turabi began, mostly due to al-Turabi's links to
Islamic fundamentalist groups, as well as allowing them to operate out of Sudan, even personally inviting
Osama bin Laden to the country. The
United States had listed Sudan as a
state sponsor of terrorism since 1993, mostly due to al-Bashir and Hassan al-Turabi taking complete power in the early 1990s.
U.S. firms have been barred from doing business in Sudan since 1997. In 1998, the
Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in
Khartoum was destroyed by a U.S.
cruise missile strike because of its alleged production of
chemical weapons and links to
al-Qaeda. However the U.S. State Department
Bureau of Intelligence and Research wrote a report in 1999 questioning the attack on the factory, suggesting that the connection to bin Laden was not accurate; James Risen reported in
The New York Times: "Now, the analysts renewed their doubts and told Assistant Secretary of State
Phyllis Oakley that the C.I.A.'s evidence on which the attack was based was inadequate. Ms. Oakley asked them to double-check; perhaps there was some intelligence they had not yet seen. The answer came back quickly: There was no additional evidence. Ms. Oakley called a meeting of key aides and a consensus emerged: Contrary to what the Administration was saying, the case tying Al Shifa to Mr. bin Laden or to chemical weapons was weak." After being re-elected president of Sudan with a five-year-term in the
1996 election with 75.7% of the popular vote, al-Bashir issued the registration of legalized political parties in 1999 after being influenced by al-Turabi. Rival parties such as the
Liberal Democrats of Sudan and the Alliance of the Peoples' Working Forces, headed by former Sudanese President
Gaafar Nimeiry, were established and were allowed to run for election against al-Bashir's
National Congress Party, however, they failed to achieve significant support, and al-Bashir was re-elected president, receiving 86.5% of the popular vote in the
2000 presidential election. At the
legislative elections that same year, al-Bashir's National Congress Party won 355 out of 360 seats, with al-Turabi as its chairman. However, after al-Turabi introduced a bill to reduce the president's powers, prompting al-Bashir to dissolve parliament and declare a
state of emergency, tensions began to rise between al-Bashir and al-Turabi. Reportedly, al-Turabi was suspended as chairman of National Congress Party, after he urged a boycott of the president's re-election campaign. Then, a splinter-faction led by al-Turabi, the Popular National Congress Party (PNC) signed an agreement with
Sudan People's Liberation Army, which led al-Bashir to believe that they were plotting to overthrow him and the government. At the same time, Sudan worked to appease the United States and other international critics by expelling members of
Egyptian Islamic Jihad and encouraging bin Laden to leave. On al-Bashir's orders, al-Turabi was imprisoned based on allegations of conspiracy in 2000 before being released in October 2003. Al-Turabi was again imprisoned in March 2004 and released in July 2005, at the height of the peace agreement in the civil war.
Engagement with the U.S. and European countries , 2005 From the early 1990s, after al-Bashir assumed power, Sudan backed
Iraq in its
invasion of Kuwait and was accused of harbouring and providing sanctuary and assistance to Islamic terrorist groups.
Carlos the Jackal,
Osama bin Laden,
Abu Nidal and others labeled "terrorist leaders" by the United States and its allies resided in Khartoum. Sudan's role in the
Popular Arab and Islamic Congress (PAIC), spearheaded by
Hassan al-Turabi, represented a matter of great concern to the security of American officials and dependents in Khartoum, resulting in several reductions and evacuations of American personnel from Khartoum in the early to mid 1990s. Sudan's Islamist links with international terrorist organizations represented a special matter of concern for the American government, leading to Sudan's 1993 designation as a state sponsor of terrorism and a suspension of U.S. Embassy operations in Khartoum in 1996. In late 1994, in an initial effort to reverse his nation's growing image throughout the world as a country harboring terrorists, Bashir secretly cooperated with French special forces to orchestrate the capture and arrest on Sudanese soil of
Carlos the Jackal. In early 1996, al-Bashir authorised his Defence Minister at the time, El Fatih Erwa, to make a series of secret trips to the United States to hold talks with American officials, including officers of the
CIA and
United States Department of State about American sanctions policy against Sudan and what measures might be taken by the Bashir regime to remove the sanctions. Erwa was presented with a series of demands from the United States, including demands for information about
Osama bin Laden and other radical Islamic groups. The US demand list also encouraged Bashir's regime to move away from activities, such as hosting the Popular Arab and Islamic Congress, that impinged on Sudanese efforts to reconcile with the West. Sudan's Mukhabarat (central intelligence agency) spent half a decade amassing intelligence data on bin Laden and a wide array of Islamists through their periodic annual visits for the PAIC conferences. In May 1996, after the series of Erwa secret meetings on US soil, the
Clinton Administration demanded that Sudan expel Bin Laden. Bashir complied. Controversy erupted about whether Sudan had offered to extradite bin Laden in return for rescinding American sanctions that were interfering with Sudan's plans to develop oil fields in southern areas of the country. American officials insisted the secret meetings were agreed only to pressure Sudan into compliance on a range of anti-terrorism issues. The Sudanese insisted that an offer to extradite bin Laden had been made in a secret one-on-one meeting at a
Fairfax hotel between Erwa and the then
CIA Africa Bureau chief on condition that
Washington end sanctions against Bashir's regime. Ambassador
Timothy M. Carney attended one of the Fairfax hotel meetings. In a joint opinion piece in the Washington Post Outlook Section in 2003, Carney and Ijaz argued that in fact the Sudanese had offered to extradite bin Laden to a third country in exchange for sanctions relief. In August 1996, American hedge-fund manager
Mansoor Ijaz travelled to Sudan and met with senior officials including al-Turabi and al-Bashir. Ijaz asked Sudanese officials to share intelligence data with US officials on bin Laden and other Islamists who had traveled to and from Sudan during the previous five years. Ijaz conveyed his findings to US officials upon his return, including
Sandy Berger, then Clinton's deputy national security adviser, and argued for the US to constructively engage the Sudanese and other Islamic countries. and imposed harsher and more comprehensive economic, trade, and financial sanctions against Sudan, which went into effect in October 1997. In August 1998, in the wake of the
East Africa embassy bombings, the U.S. launched
cruise missile strikes against Khartoum. U.S. Ambassador to Sudan, Tim Carney, departed post in February 1996 and no new ambassador was designated until December 2019, when U.S. president
Donald Trump's administration reached an agreement with the new Sudanese government to exchange ambassadors. Al-Bashir announced in August 2015 that he would travel to
New York in September to speak at the
United Nations. It was unclear to date if al-Bashir would have been allowed to travel, due to previous sanctions.
South Sudan When al-Bashir took power the
Second Sudanese Civil War had been ongoing for nine years. The war soon effectively developed into a conflict between the
Sudan People's Liberation Army and al-Bashir's government. The war resulted in millions of southerners being displaced, starved, and deprived of education and health care, with almost two million casualties. Because of these actions, various international sanctions were placed on Sudan. International pressure intensified in 2001, however, and leaders from the United Nations called for al-Bashir to make efforts to end the conflict and allow humanitarian and international workers to deliver relief to the southern regions of Sudan. Much progress was made throughout 2003. The peace was consolidated with the official signing by both sides of the
Nairobi Comprehensive Peace Agreement 9 January 2005, granting
Southern Sudan autonomy for six years, to be followed by
a referendum on independence. It created a co-vice president position and allowed the north and south to split oil deposits equally, but also left both the north's and south's armies in place.
John Garang, the south's peace agreement appointed co-vice president, died in a helicopter crash on 2005, three weeks after being sworn in. This resulted in riots, but the peace was eventually re-established and allowed the southerners to vote in a referendum of independence at the end of the six-year period. On 9 July 2011, following a referendum, the region of Southern Sudan split off from Sudan to form
South Sudan.
War in Darfur led to disputes over land between non-Arab sedentary farmers and Arab
Janjaweed nomads (see illustrative photo). Since 1968, Sudanese politicians had attempted to create separate factions of "Africans" and "Arabs" in the western area of
Darfur, a difficult task as the population were substantially intermarried and could not be distinguished by skin tone. This internal political instability was aggravated by cross-border conflicts with
Chad and
Libya and the 1984–1985 Darfur famine. In 2003, the
Justice and Equality Movement and the
Sudanese Liberation Army –accusing the government of neglecting Darfur and oppressing non-Arabs in favor of Arabs – began an armed insurgency. Estimates vary of the number of deaths resulting from attacks on the non-Arab/Arabized population by the
Janjaweed militia: the Sudanese government claim that up to 10,000 have been killed in this conflict; the United Nations reported that about 300,000 had died as of 2010, The Sudanese government had been accused of suppressing information by jailing and killing witnesses since 2004, and tampering with evidence, such as covering up
mass graves. The Sudanese government has also arrested and harassed journalists, thus limiting the extent of press coverage of the situation in Darfur. While the
United States government has described the conflict as
genocide, the UN has not recognized the conflict as such. (
see List of declarations of genocide in Darfur) The
United States Government stated in September 2004 "that
genocide has been committed in Darfur and that the Government of Sudan and the Janjaweed bear responsibility and that genocide may still be occurring". On 29 June 2004, U.S. Secretary of State
Colin Powell met with al-Bashir in Sudan and urged him to make peace with the rebels, end the crisis, and lift restrictions on the delivery of humanitarian aid to Darfur.
Kofi Annan met with al-Bashir three days later and demanded that he disarm the Janjaweed. After fighting stopped in July and August, on 2006, the
United Nations Security Council approved
Resolution 1706 which called for a new UN
peacekeeping force consisting of 17,300 military personnel and 3,300 civilians and named the
United Nations–African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID). It was intended to have supplanted or supplemented a 7,000-troop
African Union Mission in Sudan peacekeeping force. Sudan strongly objected to the resolution and said that it would see the UN forces in the region as "foreign invaders". A day after rejecting the UN forces into Sudan, the Sudanese military launched a major offensive in the region. In March 2007, the
United Nations Human Rights Council accused Sudan's government of taking part in "gross violations" in Darfur and urged the international community to take urgent action to protect people in Darfur. A high-level technical consultation was held in
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on 11– 2007, pursuant to the 2007 letters of the secretary-general and the chairperson of the African Union Commission, which were addressed to al-Bashir. The technical consultations were attended by delegations from the Government of Sudan, the
African Union, and the United Nations. In 2009, General
Martin Luther Agwai, head of the UNAMID, said the war was over in the region, although low-level disputes remained. "Banditry, localised issues, people trying to resolve issues over water and land at a local level. But real war as such, I think we are over that," he said. This perspective is contradicted by reports which indicate that violence continues in Darfur while peace efforts have been stalled repeatedly. Violence between Sudan's military and rebel fighters has beset
South Kordofan and
Blue Nile states since disputed state elections in May 2011, an ongoing humanitarian crisis that has prompted international condemnation and U.S. congressional hearings. In 2012, tensions between Sudan and South Sudan reached a boiling point when the Sudanese military bombed territory in South Sudan, leading to hostilities over the disputed Heglig (or Panthou) oil fields located along the Sudan-South Sudan border. Omar al-Bashir sought the assistance of numerous non-western countries after the West, led by America, imposed sanctions against him, he said: "From the first day, our policy was clear: To look eastward, toward
China,
Malaysia,
India,
Pakistan,
Indonesia, and even
Korea and
Japan, even if the Western influence upon some [of these] countries is strong. We believe that the Chinese expansion was natural because it filled the space left by Western governments, the United States, and international funding agencies. The success of the Sudanese experiment in dealing with China without political conditions or pressures encouraged other African countries to look toward China." Chadian President
Idriss Déby visited Khartoum in 2010 and Chad kicked out the Darfuri rebels it had previously supported. Both Sudanese and Chadian sides together established a joint military border patrol. On 26 October 2011, al-Bashir announced that he had supported the rebels that had ousted
Muammar Gaddafi. It was a reciprocal move for Gaddafi supporting the rebels in Darfur, including the Justice and Equality Movement. "Our God, high and exalted, from above the seven skies, gave us the opportunity to reciprocate the visit," he said. "The forces which entered
Tripoli, part of their arms and capabilities, were 100% Sudanese," he told the crowd. His speech was well received by a large crowd in the eastern Sudanese town of Kassala. Al-Bashir in his speech said that his government's priority was to end the armed rebellion and tribal conflicts in order to save blood and direct the energies of young people towards building Sudan instead of "killing and destruction". He called upon youth of the rebel groups to lay down arms and join efforts to build the country. Al Bashir sees himself as a man wronged and misunderstood. He takes full responsibility for the conflict in Darfur, he says, but says that his government did not start the fighting and has done everything in its power to end it. by the government of Sudan along with a faction of the
SLA led by
Minni Minnawi. However, the agreement was rejected by two other, smaller groups, the
Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and a rival faction of the SLA led by
Abdul Wahid al Nur. • The 2011 Darfur Peace Agreement, also known as the "
Doha Agreement", was signed in July 2011 between the government of Sudan and the
Liberation and Justice Movement. This agreement established a compensation fund for victims of the Darfur conflict, allowed the president of Sudan to appoint a vice-president from Darfur, and established a new
Darfur Regional Authority to oversee the region until a
referendum can determine its permanent status within the Republic of Sudan. The agreement also provided for
power sharing at the national level: movements that sign the agreement will be entitled to nominate two ministers and two four ministers of state at the federal level and will be able to nominate 20 members to the national legislature. The movements will be entitled to nominate two state governors in the Darfur region.
Indictment by the ICC . On 14 July 2008, the Chief Prosecutor of the
International Criminal Court (ICC),
Luis Moreno Ocampo, alleged that al-Bashir bore
individual criminal responsibility for
genocide,
crimes against humanity, and
war crimes that had been committed in Darfur since 2003. The prosecutor accused al-Bashir of having "masterminded and implemented" a plan to destroy the three main ethnic groups—
Fur,
Masalit, and
Zaghawa—with a campaign of murder, rape, and
deportation. The arrest warrant is supported by
NATO, the
Genocide Intervention Network, and
Amnesty International. An arrest warrant for al-Bashir was issued on 2009 by a pre-trial chamber composed of judges
Akua Kuenyehia of
Ghana,
Anita Ušacka of
Latvia, and
Sylvia Steiner of
Brazil indicting him on five counts of crimes against humanity (murder, extermination, forcible transfer, torture and rape) and two counts of war crimes (
pillaging and intentionally directing attacks against civilians). The court ruled that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute him for genocide. Sudan is not a state party to the
Rome Statute establishing the ICC, and thus claims that it does not have to execute the warrant. However,
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1593 (2005) referred Sudan to the ICC, which gives the court
jurisdiction over international crimes committed in Sudan and obligates Government of Sudan to cooperate with the ICC, and therefore the court, Amnesty International and others insist that Sudan must comply with the arrest warrant of the International Criminal Court.
Amnesty International stated that al-Bashir must turn himself in to face the charges, and that the Sudanese authorities must detain him and turn him over to the ICC if he refuses. Al-Bashir was the first sitting
head of state ever indicted by the ICC. and the
African Union condemned the warrant. Following the indictment Al-Bashir visited China,
Djibouti, Libya,
Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the
United Arab Emirates, and several other countries, all of which refused to have him arrested. ICC member state Chad also refused to arrest al-Bashir during a state visit in July 2010. He was also invited to attend conferences in
Denmark and
Turkey. On 28 November 2011, following a visit to
Kenya, Kenya's High Court Judge Nicholas Ombija ordered the Minister of Internal Security to arrest al-Bashir, "should he set foot in Kenya in the future". In June 2015, while in
South Africa for an
African Union meeting, al-Bashir was prohibited from leaving that country while a court decided whether he should be handed over to the ICC for war crimes. He, nevertheless, was allowed to leave South Africa soon afterward. Luis Moreno Ocampo and Amnesty International claimed that al-Bashir's plane could be intercepted in international airspace. Sudan announced that the presidential plane would always be escorted by fighter jets of the
Sudanese Air Force to prevent his arrest. In March 2009, just before al-Bashir's visit to Qatar, the Sudanese government was reportedly considering sending fighter jets to accompany his plane to Qatar, possibly in response to France expressing support for an operation to intercept his plane in international airspace, as France has military bases in Djibouti and the United Arab Emirates. The charges against al-Bashir have been criticized and ignored in Sudan and abroad, particularly in Africa and the Muslim world. Former president of the
African Union Muammar al-Gaddafi characterized the indictment as a form of terrorism. He also believed that the warrant is an attempt "by (the west) to recolonize their former colonies". Egypt said, it was "greatly disturbed" by the ICC decision and called for an emergency meeting of the UN security council to defer the arrest warrant. The
Arab League Secretary-General
Amr Moussa expressed that the organization emphasizes its solidarity with Sudan and condemned the warrant for "undermining the unity and stability of Sudan". The
Organisation of Islamic Cooperation denounced the warrant as unwarranted and totally unacceptable. It argued that the warrant demonstrated "selectivity and double standard applied in relation to issues of war crimes". Al-Bashir has rejected the charges, saying "Whoever has visited Darfur, met officials and discovered their ethnicities and tribes ... will know that all of these things are lies." He described the charges as "not worth the ink they are written in". The warrant was to be delivered to the Sudanese government, which stated that they would not carry it out. President Bashir described the aid agencies as thieves who take "99 percent of the budget for humanitarian work themselves, giving the people of Darfur 1 percent" and as spies in the work of foreign regimes. Bashir promised that national agencies will provide aid to Darfur. , Ethiopia, 31 January 2009 Al-Bashir was one of the candidates in the
2010 Sudanese presidential election, the first democratic election with multiple political parties participating since the
1986 election. It had been suggested that by holding and winning a legitimate presidential elections in 2010, al-Bashir had hoped to evade the ICC's warrant for his arrest. On 26 April, he was officially declared the winner after Sudan's election commission announced he had received 68% of the votes cast in the election. However,
The New York Times noted the voting was "marred by boycotts and reports of intimidation and widespread fraud". In August 2013, Bashir's plane was blocked from entering Saudi Arabian airspace when Bashir was attempting to attend the inauguration of Iranian President
Hassan Rouhani, whose country is the main supplier of weapons to Sudan. A second arrest warrant for al-Bashir was issued on 12 July 2010. The ICC issued an additional warrant adding 3 counts of genocide for the
ethnic cleansing of the Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa tribes. The new warrant included the court's conclusion that there were reasonable grounds to suspect that al-Bashir acted with specific
intent to destroy in part the Fur, Masalit and
Zaghawa ethnic groups in the Darfur region. The charges against al-Bashir, in three separate counts, include "genocide by killing", "genocide by causing serious bodily or mental harm" and "genocide by deliberately inflicting on each target group conditions of life calculated to bring about the group's physical destruction". The new warrant acted as a supplement to the first, whereby the charges initially brought against al-Bashir all remained in place, but now included the crime of genocide which was initially ruled out, pending appeal. 's Supreme Leader
Ali Khamenei, Tehran, 31 August 2012 during a meeting in Sochi on 27 November 2017Al-Bashir said that Sudan is not a party to the ICC treaty and could not be expected to abide by its provisions just like the United States, China and Russia. He said "It is a political issue and double standards, because there are obvious crimes like Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan, but [they] did not find their way to the International Criminal Court". He added "The same decision in which [the] Darfur case [was] being transferred to the court stated that the American soldiers [in Iraq and Afghanistan] would not be questioned by the court, so it is not about justice, it is a political issue." Al Bashir accused Luis Moreno Ocampo, the ICC's chief prosecutor since 2003 of repeatedly lying in order to damage his reputation and standing. Al-Bashir said "The behavior of the prosecutor of the court, it was clearly the behavior of a political activist not a legal professional. He is now working on a big campaign to add more lies." He added, "The biggest lie was when he said I have $9bn in one of the British banks, and thank God, the British bank and the [British] finance minister … denied these allegations." He also said: "The clearest cases in the world such as Palestine and Iraq and Afghanistan, clear crimes to the whole humanity – all were not transferred to the court." As permanent members of the UNSC, they opposed the ICC's actions against Al-Bashir and worked within the UNSC to block resolutions that would force Al-Bashir to comply with the court's rulings. China had significant economic and strategic interests in Sudan, including oil investments, and maintained strong diplomatic ties with Al-Bashir's government. They hosted him in 2015 despite the arrest warrants against him, and Russia as well in 2017, undermining the legitimacy of the court's ruling. In October 2013, several members of the African Union expressed anger at the ICC, calling it "racist" for failing to file charges against Western leaders or Western allies while prosecuting only African suspects so far. The African Union demanded that the ICC protect African heads of state from prosecution. , New Delhi, India, 30 October 2015
Military intervention in Yemen In 2015, Sudan participated in the
Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen against the
Shia Houthis and forces loyal to former president
Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was deposed during the 2011–2012
Yemeni revolution.
Reuters reported that "The war in Yemen has given Omar Hassan al-Bashir, a skilled political operator who has ruled Sudan for a quarter-century, an opportunity to show wealthy Sunni powers that he can be an asset against Iranian influence – if the price is right."
Allegations of corruption During the Second Sudanese Civil War, Al-Bashir allegedly looted Sudan of much of its wealth. According to leaked US diplomatic cables, $9 billion of his siphoned wealth was stored in banks in London. Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the chief prosecutor of the ICC, stated that some of the funds were being held in the partially nationalized Lloyds Banking Group. He also reportedly told US officials it was necessary to go public with the scale of al-Bashir's extortion to turn public opinion against him. One US official stated "Ocampo suggested if Bashir's stash of money were disclosed (he put the figure at $9bn), it would change Sudanese public opinion from him being a 'crusader' to that of a thief." "Ocampo reported Lloyd's bank in London may be holding or knowledgeable of the whereabouts of his money," the report says. "Ocampo suggested exposing Bashir had illegal accounts would be enough to turn the Sudanese against him." A
leaked diplomatic cable allegedly reveals that the Sudanese president had embezzled US$9 billion in state funds, but
Lloyds Bank "insisted it was not aware of any link with Bashir," while a Sudanese government spokesman called the claim "ludicrous" and attacked the motives of the prosecutor. In an interview with the Guardian, al-Bashir said, referring to ICC Prosecutor Ocampo, "The biggest lie was when he said I have $9 billion in one of the British banks, and thank God, the British bank and the [British] finance minister ... denied these allegations." (OIC) in Sudan, January 2019 Part of the
$8.9 billion fine the
BNP Paribas paid for sanctions violations was related to their trade with Sudan. While smaller fines have also been given to other banks, US Justice Department officials said that they found the BNP particularly uncooperative, calling it Sudan's
de facto central bank.
African space agency In 2012, al-Bashir proposed setting up a continent-wide space agency in Africa. In a statement he said, "I'm calling for the biggest project, an African space agency. Africa must have its space agency... [It] will liberate Africa from technological domination".
Ousting from power On 11 April 2019, al-Bashir was removed from his post by the
Sudanese Armed Forces after many
months of protests and civil uprisings. He was immediately placed under house arrest pending the formation of a transitional council. At the time of his arrest al-Bashir had been the longest-serving leader of Sudan since the country gained independence in 1956, and was the longest-ruling president of the
Arab League. The army also ordered the arrest of all ministers in al-Bashir's cabinet, dissolved the
National Legislature and formed a
Transitional Military Council, led by his own First Vice President and Defense Minister, Lieutenant General
Ahmed Awad Ibn Auf. ==Post-presidency==