Hemetti regrets bloody attack on Sudan’s pro-democracy sit-in
August 6, 2019 (KHARTOUM) – Two months after the brutal attack on the pro-democracy sit-in Khartoum, the Deputy Chairman of the Transitional Military Council (TMC) Mohamed Hamdan Hemetti, wished they did not decide to clean the area of Colombia, which was a pretext to the implementation of a plan to break the protest site and kill over a hundred protesters on 3 June.
The TMC has always denied ordering the attack on the main site protest site outside the army headquarters in Khartoum. They stress they decided to break up an area nearby the sit-in called Colombia infested by drug dealers after consulting the Attorney General and the Ministry of Justice.
Addressing a graduation ceremony of the “Rapid Support Forces” officers at Khartoum’s Intelligence Institute on Monday, Hemetti confessed that there was someone who planned to break up the sit-in and should be identified.
“We would not have decided to clean up the Colombia area, and if we knew it would be a gateway to a plan to be implemented. We would not have approached it and kept it despite its drug and other inconveniences,” he said.
He said that the African Union’s supported independent commission of investigation, agreed recently with the Forces for Freedom and Change, would not succeed in its mission if all relevant parties did not cooperate.
The agreement on the transitional authority concluded with the FFC preserved the rights of all people, including the people of the marginalized areas.
On 27 July, the head of the investigation committee of the Attorney General, Fatteh Al-Rahman Saeed told a news conference that 87 people were killed, and 168 were wounded during the attack on the sit-in.
But the opposition FFC rejected the findings of the Attorney-General investigation commission into the raid on the pro-democracy sit-in and pointed out that it did not identify those responsible for the attack and did not disclose the true number of victims.
The TMC says they conducted their own investigation and arrested many military officers who were behind the operation which aimed to create chaos in Sudan and pave the way to re-establish the former Islamist regime, as they claim.
(ST)