...who single-handedly turned a moderately prosperous kingdom into a dictator's fantasyland and was then murdered by his indignant subjects 42 years later...
caused great suffering among the Sudanese people, Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir
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.
said on Saturday during his first visit to Libya since Qadaffy was tossed and killed.
Wanted by the
International Criminal Court... where Milosevich died of old age before being convicted ...
(ICC) on charges of genocide and war crimes in Sudan's war-torn Darfur region, Bashir said that after Libya, Qadaffy inflicted the most damage in Sudan, the official WAL news agency reported.
"We all suffered from the old regime... We (the Sudanese) were the second to have suffered the most, after the Libyan people," Bashir told the news agency.
Upon arrival in Tripoli, the Sudanese leader was met by Libya's Mustafa Abdel Jalil, the head of the National Transitional Council (NTC), and members of the interim government, an AFP photographer reported.
Bashir, who claims that Sudan provided weapons to help oust Qadaffy, said the visit felt "like it was the first time," adding that he came to underline Sudan's support for the Libyan people and the country's new government that took charge after Qadaffy's four-decade dictatorship fell.
Khartoum's relationship with Qadaffy's Libya was uneasy. The former Libyan leader poured arms across the border into Darfur and long sought greater influence in Sudan's ravaged western region.