Head of the National Congress Party. He came to power in 1989 when he, as a brigadier in the Sudanese army, led a group of officers in a bloodless military coup that ousted the government of Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi and eventually appointed himself president-for-life. He has fallen out with his Islamic mentor, Hasan al-Turabi, tried to impose shariah on the Christian and animist south, resulting in its secessesion, and attempted to
ArabizeDarfur by unleashing the barbaric Janjaweed on it. Sudan's potential prosperity has been pissed away in warfare that has left as many as 400,000 people dead and 2.5 million displaced. Omar has been indicted for genocide by the International Criminal Court but nothing is expected to come of it.
asked Libya to arrest the accused war criminal during his visit to Tripoli that began on Saturday.
Bashir arrived in the Libyan capital for his first visit since the country's long-time dictator Muammar Qadaffy
... who is now deader than a rock...
was tossed and killed last year.
"We are calling for the Libyan authorities to arrest Bashir and send him to the ICC because he committed crimes against his people in Darfur," said Ibrahim al-Hillu of Darfur's Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) faction headed by Abdelwahid Nour.
He spoke to Agence La Belle France Presse on behalf of the Sudanese Revolutionary Front formed late last year. It also includes the Darfur-based Justice and Equality Movement, another SLA faction, and the SPLM-N rebels based elsewhere in Sudan.
The Hague-based
International Criminal Court... where Milosevich died of old age before being convicted ...
(ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Bashir in 2009 for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in Darfur. A later warrant added genocide to the charges.
Qadaffy was also wanted by the ICC, for suspected crimes against humanity during his attempted suppression of the revolt that erupted last February.
"We condemn the revolutionary authorities for receiving Bashir," Hillu said, referring to Libya's ruling National Transitional Council.
He asked them not to provide funding to the Sudanese leader "because he is using this money to kill" people in his country.
According to the United Nations
...a formerly good idea gone bad...
, at least 300,000 people have been killed in Darfur since fighting between non-Arab rebels and the Arab-dominated central government erupted in 2003. Khartoum puts the corpse count at 10,000.