Sudan: court adjourns trial of 1989 coup plotters 

The court trying ousted Sudanese President Omar Al Bashir and 27 former officials of the 1989 coup that swept his regime to power has announced an adjournment for a week, Anadolu has reported. The delay is due to the judge facing “emergency circumstances”.

No further details were provided by the official Sudanese news agency, which pointed out, “The court session was held at the headquarters of the Sudanese Judicial and Legal Sciences Institute, in the presence of the prosecution and defence teams.”

During the session, the defence lawyers submitted a petition to the court to release the 70-year-old defendants, and give “financial guarantees” to all who are sentenced to anything less than the death penalty.

READ: Sudan’s military to release political detainees ahead of dialogue

Sudanese lawyers submitted a legal petition to the Public Prosecutor in Khartoum in May 2019 against Al-Bashir and his aides. The charges were plotting the coup and undermining the Sudanese constitution. The first session of the 1989 coup trial began in July 2020.

In addition to Al-Bashir, the defendants include leaders of the Popular Congress Party, such as Ali Al-Hajj, Ibrahim Al-Senussi and Omar Abdel-Maarouf, as well as former regime officials Ali Othman, Nafie Ali Nafeh, Awad Al-Jaz and Ahmed Muhammad Ali Al-Fashshaweya.

Al-Bashir carried out a military coup against the government of Prime Minister Sadiq Al-Mahdi on 30 June 1989, and became president of Sudan later in the same year. He was ousted after three decades in power on 11 April 2019 and held in Kober Central Prison, north of Khartoum.

Sudan’s military seized power and arrested Prime Minister, Abdalla Hamdok – Cartoon [Sabaaneh/Middle East Monitor]