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.
, who is wanted for alleged war crimes, is one of only four leaders not invited by U.S. President Barack Obama
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for the three-day meeting focused on building economic ties between the two continents.
"It was abnormal that Africa accepts to go to this meeting while one of its very important members was not invited", Sudan's Foreign Minister Ali Karti said in comments published Monday by Sudanese newspapers.
Islamist-run Khartoum has been under U.S. economic sanctions since 1997 over what Washington said were human rights
...which are usually entirely different from personal
liberty...
violations and other issues.
In 2009 and 2010 the
International Criminal Court... where Milosevich died of old age before being convicted ...
in The Hague issued arrest warrants for Bashir for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide allegedly carried out in Sudan's Darfur region.
Fifty African heads of state were sent invitations to the summit, the greatest ever concentration of African leadership in Washington.
Zim-bob-we's Bob
MuggsyMugabe
Octogenarian President-for-Life of Zim-bob-we who turned the former Breadbasket of Africa into the African Basket Case...
, Eritrea
...is run by the People's Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ), with about the amounts of democracy and justice you'd expect from a party with that name. National elections have been periodically scheduled and cancelled; none have ever been held in the country. The president, Isaias Afewerki, has been in office since independence in 1993 and will probably die there of old age...
's Issaias Afeworki and the Central African Republic's transitional leader Catherine Samba Panza were also left off the guest list.