A former head of the dictatorship in Sudan wanted for crimes against humanity has announced that he fled prison with other ex-collaborators in this country in full chaos, raising fears of a new conflagration when a ceasefire -fire concluded under the aegis of the United States remains fragile.
Ahmed Haroun was detained in Kober prison, in the capital Khartoum, with other senior officials of the former regime of Omar al-Bashir, dictator ousted in 2019 and under an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC) for “crimes against humanity” and “genocide” in Darfur.
In a speech recorded on Sudanese television on Tuesday evening, Mr. Haroun, also wanted by the ICC, said that former officials of Mr. Bashir’s regime were no longer in detention. “We remained in detention in Kober for nine days […] and we now have the responsibility for our protection” in another place, he said.
The 72-hour ceasefire in Sudan that came into effect on Tuesday is partially respected. Evacuations of foreigners and civilians fleeing the country continue on Wednesday.
The fighting for 12 days has pitted the paramilitaries of General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo’s Rapid Support Forces (FSR) against the regular army of Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, two generals who carried out the coup in October 2021, who are now fighting to a merciless war.
Ousted Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir, also accused of “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” in Darfur, is “still in a hospital under the custody of the judicial police”, however announced the army.
The army assures that four other “soldiers accused for June 30”, the coup d’état of Bashir in 1989, have also been “in the Alia hospital of the armed forces” since “before the start” of the fighting on April 15 between the two ruling generals in Khartoum.
A conflict that erupted there in 2003 between Khartoum and members of non-Arab ethnic minorities. It left some 300,000 dead and 2.5 million displaced, according to the UN. The RSF forces include thousands of former Arab militiamen recruited by Bashir to carry out the scorched earth policy in Darfur.
“Extreme difficulties”
In the Sudanese capital, clashes around “strategic places” have “largely continued and sometimes even intensified”, the head of the UN mission in Sudan, Volker Perthes, told the Security Council on Tuesday evening. Port Sudan, where the UN has relocated some of its staff.
Since the start of the fighting on April 15, more than 459 people have been killed and more than 4,000 injured according to the UN.
“Close to the Chadian border, fighting has resumed and there are growing and disturbing reports of tribes arming and joining the fighting,” Perthes said, adding that “inter-communal clashes” had also taken place. erupted in the Blue Nile region on the southeastern border with Ethiopia.
Up to 270,000 people could still flee to neighboring Chad and South Sudan, according to the UN.
“The most difficult thing is the sound of bombardments and fighter planes flying over our house. It terrified the children,” said Safa Abu Taher, who landed with her family in Jordan overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday.
A boat carrying 1,687 civilians who fled Sudan and originating from more than fifty countries arrived in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, and 245 French nationals and foreigners evacuated by plane by the French authorities landed Wednesday morning near Paris.
Those who cannot leave Khartoum, a city of more than five million people, try to survive without water and electricity, subject to food shortages and telephone and internet blackouts.
According to the UN, “24,000 (women) are expected to give birth in the coming weeks” and face “extreme difficulties” in accessing care while, according to the doctors’ union, nearly three-quarters of hospitals are out of service. The conflict risks “invading the entire region and beyond”, warned the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres.
For its part, the World Health Organization (WHO) is concerned about an “enormous” biological risk after the seizure “by one of the fighting parties” of a “public health laboratory” in Khartoum, which contains pathogens of measles, cholera and poliomyelitis.