A former head of the dictatorship in Sudan wanted for crimes against humanity has announced that he fled prison with other former collaborators in this country in full chaos, raising fears of a new conflagration at the time of a cease-fire. 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 old regime, in particular Omar Al-Bashir, dictator ousted in 2019 and under the scope of an arrest warrant of the International Criminal Court (ICC) for “crimes against humanity” and “genocide” in Darfur.
In an address recorded on Sudanese television on Tuesday evening April 25, Mr. Haroun, also wanted by the ICC, said that former officials of Mr. Al-Bashir’s regime were no longer in detention. “We have been in detention in Kober for nine days (…) and now we have the responsibility for our protection” in another location, he said.
The 72-hour ceasefire that came into effect on Tuesday is partially respected. Evacuations of foreigners and civilians fleeing the country continue on Wednesday. The fighting has been going on for twelve days between the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (FSR) of Mohamed Hamdan Daglo said “Hemetti” and the regular army of Abdel Fattah Al-Burhane, two generals who carried out the coup in October 2021, which are now engaged in a merciless war.
Clashes around “strategic locations”
The whereabouts of former dictator Omar Al-Bashir, in power for 30 years, could not be independently verified. Like Mr. Haroun, he is wanted for “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” in Darfur, in the west of the country.
A conflict erupted there in 2003 between Khartoum and members of non-Arab ethnic minorities. It killed some 300,000 people and displaced 2.5 million, according to the UN. The RSF forces include thousands of former Arab militiamen recruited by Mr. Al-Bashir to carry out the scorched earth policy in Darfur.
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 (east), where the UN has relocated some of its staff.
Since the fighting began on April 15, more than 459 people have been killed and more than 4,000 injured according to the UN. “Near 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-community clashes” had also occurred. erupted in the Blue Nile region, on the southeastern border with Ethiopia.
Water and electricity cuts
Up to 270,000 people could still flee to neighboring Chad and South Sudan, according to the UN. “The hardest thing is the sound of bombings and fighter jets 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 50 countries arrived in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday and 245 French and foreign nationals evacuated by plane by the French authorities landed Wednesday morning near Paris. Those who cannot leave Khartoum, a city of more than 5 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 UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.
For its part, the World Health Organization (WHO) is concerned about an “enormous” biological risk after “one of the fighting parties” took over a “public health laboratory” in Khartoum, which contains pathogens of measles, cholera and poliomyelitis.
