KHARTOUM: A Sudanese court yesterday sentenced to death a top Darfur rebel and seven others, bringing to 38 the number condemned to hang over an unprecedented attack on Khartoum that killed more than 222 people.
Abdul Aziz Ashur, half brother of Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) leader Khalil Ibrahim, and seven alleged cohorts were sentenced to hang after a trial that began on July 3.
The judge handed down the death sentence after declaring them guilty under Sudanese criminal and counterterrorism legislation of involvement in the May attack on Khartoum. He gave them two weeks to appeal.
The accused, handcuffed and sitting in a wire-caged dock, and relatives barred from attending the hearing began chanting anti-government slogans after the sentences were read out, an AFP correspondent said.
“Up with JEM!” and “Death to the government!” they shouted.
Ashur joined JEM in 2003 and headed its operations in Eritrea until 2005 when Sudanese-Eritrean relations improved after a peace agreement between north and south Sudan ended 21 years of civil war.
Special Sudanese courts last month sentenced 30 alleged Darfur rebels to death over the attack on the capital on May 10 — the first time decades of regional conflict had reached Khartoum itself.
Defense lawyers argue that the special courts are unconstitutional and do not guarantee their clients’ legal rights.
Defense lawyer Kemal Omar dismissed the court as a political entity and charged that the sentences would complicate efforts to find a solution to the five-year conflict in the Darfur region.
“We will appeal this decision but our appeal will have no meaning. The Sudanese judge is not independent,” he said.
The United Nations has also voiced concern over the trials, calling for comp-rehensive appeal procedures and on Khartoum to abolish capital punishment.
Under Sudanese law, any death sentence must be ratified by both an appeals’ court and the high court. All death warrants must then be signed and approved by President Omar Bashir.
The International Criminal Court prosecutor has asked for an arrest warrant for Bashir for allegedly ordering his forces to annihilate three ethnic groups in Darfur, masterminding murder, torture, pillaging and using rape to commit genocide.
Those three groups are the Masalit, Fur and Zaghawa — the tribe to which most JEM members belong.
More than 222 people were killed when rebels thrust upward of 1,000 km across the sandy expanse from western Sudan’s region of Darfur to Omdurman, just across the River Nile from the presidential palace.
The United Nations says that up to 300,000 people have died and more than 2.2 million have fled their homes since the conflict in Darfur erupted in February 2003. Sudan says 10,000 have been killed.
The war began when African ethnic minority rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated Khartoum regime and state-backed Arab militias, fighting for resources and power in one of the most remote and deprived places on earth.
