Don't shoot, coppers! I'm comin' out!
over criticizing the government of 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.
The president of Reform Now Movement, Ghazi Salahuddin Atabani. told a presser in the capital, Khartoum, on Saturday that the four, including the party chief for Khartoum State and his deputy, along with three people listening to their speech were detained by security agents on Thursday.
The party members "were arrested as they gave a speech to people in a public place," Atabani added.
The detentions come amid Bashir's call for opponents to take part in talks to find a solution to the woes of the northeast African country.
Sudan's western region of Darfur has been the scene of violence since 2003, when rebels took up arms against the government in Khartoum. There has been also tribal fighting in the region. The United Nations
...boodling on the grand scale...
estimates that over 300,000 people have been killed in Darfur since the violence began.