BREAKING: SUDANESE PRESIDENT, OMAR OVERTHROWN, ARRESTED BY THE MILITARY
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Sudan President, Omar al-Bashir, who has been in office for three decades, has been overthrown and is being held by the military.
According to the country’s defence minister, Omar has been arrested and that a military council would be running the country for a two-year transitional period, with elections to follow.
But the main organiser of protests against al-Bashir rejected the minister’s statement and called for demonstrations to continue.
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Reuters reports that Bashir was at the presidential residence under “heavy guard” while a son of Sadiq al-Mahdi, the head of the country’s main opposition Umma Party, told al-Hadath TV that the former president was under house arrest with “a number of leaders of the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood group.”
Omar Saleh Sennar, a senior member of the Sudanese Professionals’ Association (SPA), told Reuters they would only accept a civilian government made up of opposition figures. He added that the group was still waiting for a statement by the army.
He said, “we will only accept a transitional civilian government composed of the forces of the Declaration of Freedom and Change”.
Sudan’s state news agency SUNA reported that the country’s security service had released all political prisoners after Bashir’s step down from power.
On Thursday morning, anti-government protesters marched through the streets of Khartoum chanting anti-Bashir slogans.
Protesters outside the defence ministry chanted: “It has fallen, we won.”
Later in the day, soldiers were seen storming the headquarters of Bashir’s Islamic Movement by Reuters witnesses.
Bashir, a former paratrooper, seized power in 1989 after a coup. Bashir was indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague after allegations of genocide in Sudan’s Darfur region surfaced.
The United States placed Bashir’s government in its list of terrorism sponsors for allegedly fostering Islamist militants. Because of that, Sudan was placed under extended periods of isolation since 1993 after Washington slapped sanctions four years later.
It is not yet known what will happen to Bashir.
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