Since his ouster last year, Sudan’s veteran leader Omar al-Bashir has been detained and convicted of corruption, becoming the Middle East’s latest fallen strongman.
The 76-year-old, held in Khartoum’s Kober prison where many of his opponents were detained during his rule, had ruthlessly crushed dissent after his rise to power in a 1989 Islamist-backed coup.
For three decades, he tenaciously held onto power through several bouts of protests, even after the 2011 Arab Spring revolts that toppled Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi.
Bashir’s fate, however, was sealed after his own military reacted to mounting popular anger and ousted him in April last year after months of street demonstrations.
He was handed a two-year sentence over corruption charges in December and faces separate charges over the deaths of protesters and the 1989 coup that brought him to power.
An appeals court upheld the sentence on Wednesday.
The former leader has also been indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague over war crimes and genocide in the war-ravaged Darfur region of western Sudan.
One of Africa’s longest-serving presidents, Bashir showed many different faces during his 30 years at the helm.
Known for his trademark dancing and waving of a cane before addressing loyalists, Bashir had remained defiant in the face of growing street protests before his overthrow.
He long proved himself a political survivor, evading not only the ICC but also a myriad of domestic challenges ranging from economic misery to bloody internal conflicts.
– Darfur conflict –
Bashir was indicted by the ICC over the Darfur conflict that erupted in 2003 when ethnic minority rebels took up arms against his Arab-dominated government, accusing it of political and economic marginalisation of their region.
The United Nations estimates around 300,000 people were killed and 2.5 million others displaced in the conflict.
Human rights groups say Khartoum targeted suspected pro-rebel ethnic groups with a scorched earth policy, raping, killing, looting and burning villages.
.AFP