Sudan’s army-aligned authorities on Sunday arrested Ahmed Haroun, the head of ousted dictator Omar al-Bashir’s ruling National Congress party and a leading Islamist figure, a security official told AFP Sunday.
Haroun was “taken into custody based on legal procedures”, the source said, requesting anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the media.
The Islamist leader, who is wanted for war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court, was first arrested in April 2019, after Bashir was ousted following mass protests.
He was jailed until 2023, when he and other former regime leaders escaped prison in an apparent jailbreak at the start of the war between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. Haroun has since reappeared rallying support for the Sudanese army, drawing accusations against army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan that he had welcomed Islamists from the former regime back into the fold.
He had maintained a relatively low profile until Friday, when he gave a high-visibility four-hour interview to a podcast, in which he affirmed support for Burhan, who he said was “affected by publicity” and “international pressure” against the Islamists.
Burhan, a career soldier who rose through the ranks of Bashir’s military dictatorship, has used Islamist leaders to rally political and military support, according to sources in his government.
But Sudan’s de facto leader has come under pressure from the United States, which has tried to broker peace talks, along with his allies Saudi Arabia and Egypt, to distance himself from Islamists, according to diplomats and analysts.
Bashir’s ouster in April 2019 had raised hopes for a transition to democracy, before Burhan and his then-deputy, RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, ousted civilians from a transitional government in 2021.
A long-simmering feud between them broke out in war in April 2023, after a final power struggle over the planned integration of the RSF into the regular army.
The army has since relied on a coalition of militias to fight the RSF, including Islamist fighters.
The ICC has for years called for the surrender of Haroun and Bashir himself, who was moved from an army hospital before the onset of the war and remains in an undisclosed location.
Haroun faces 20 counts of crimes against humanity and 22 war-crimes charges for his role in recruiting the Janjaweed militia, which carried out ethnic massacres in Darfur in the 2000s and later became the RSF.
The United States in 2024 offered a reward of up to $5 million for his arrest.
By Agencies
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