Bashir pardons five Darfur rebel figures sentenced to death
March 16, 2015 (KHARTOUM) – The Sudanese president Omer Hassan al-Bashir issued a decree pardoning five convicts from the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) who belong to the faction which signed a peace agreement with Khartoum led by Bakheit Abdul-Karim Dabago.
JEM- Dabago political affairs secretary Nahar Osman Nahar welcomed the move but noted that it is belated by more than a year.
The splinter faction signed a peace agreement with the Sudanese government within the framework of the Doha Document for Peace in Darfur in 2013 but the agreement did not see the light as a result of the assassination of its first leader Mohammed Bashar in battles with legacy JEM group led by Jibril Ibrahim.
The movement then chose Dabago as its new chief after which it signed political and security understandings with the government and the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) which guaranteed the group a share in the government.
It also embarked on security arrangements to accommodate JEM-Dabago soldiers in the regular government forces.
Nahar told Sudan Tribune on Monday that the five pardoned convicts are Hamid Hussein Hamid, Ahmed Mohamed Osman Hassan Abu, al-Sadiq Adam Abdullah, Mohammed Jibril Abdel-Mawla.
He noted that the movement’s detainees are around 90 with 13 of them released later.
He attributed the delay in releasing them to a vetting process by the government and ensuring that these individuals have no claims against them by ordinary citizens.
Nahar called on legacy JEM to release their 17 POW’s who were taken during the attack on the convoy of their former head Bashar on the Sudan-Chad border.
He mentioned that Ibrahim linked release of their POW’s with having Sudanese authorities free their leading figure including Abdul Aziz Ushar.
“It makes no sense to link the fate of the 17 detainees to one person” calling it political opportunism.
(ST)