Darfur rebels release pro-Khartoum dignitary
KHARTOUM, July 17 (AFP) — Rebels in Sudan’s troubled western region of Darfur have freed an ethnic minority dignitary accused of siding with the Arab-dominated regime in Khartoum, pro-government media reported Saturday.
Sadek Abbas Dhaw al-Bait, the nazir, or traditional ruler, of the Berti community, a sedentary non-Arab people living in the region’s central Jebel Marra massif, arrived back in government-held territory Friday, state radio and Khartoum newspapers said.
He had been held for six-days by minority rebels of the Sudan Liberation Movement.
Bait said he had been abducted from Toweishah village near Um Kaddadah in North Darfur State by 13 rebels in Landcruisers who accused him of “spying” for the government, a charge he denied.
They eventually freed him and even returned his rifle and satellite telephone in a move Bait attributed to the “pressures exerted by the North Darfur government and by Berti dignitaries”.
At an official ceremony marking his release, North Darfur Governor Osman Yusuf Kibir branded Bait’s abductors as “aimless groups of bandits and highwaymen” whose acts “will not dissuade us from pursuing a peaceful solution” to the Darfur crisis.
The civil war sparked by the rebellion launched by the SLM and another ethnic minority rebel faction early last year has left more than 10,000 dead and well over a million people homeless in what the United Nations describes as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
The international community charges that Khartoum-sponsored Arab militias bear the lion’s share of responsibility for the suffering and Washington has threatened to push for UN sanctions against the government unless it reins in the militia commanders.
African Union observers are on the ground to oversee a tenuous ceasefire but the North Darfur governor lashed out at their work.
The AU observers were “passive and are doing nothing about what is happening before their eyes,” Kibir was quoted as saying.