Sudan’s Bashir removes powerful intelligence chief
August 13, 2009 (KHARTOUM) — The Sudanese president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir unexpectedly issued a decree on Thursday night replacing the head of the National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS) Salah Gosh with his deputy Mohamed Atta Al-Moula Abbas.
The brief statement broadcasted on Sudan’s state media said that Bashir appointed Gosh as his adviser but provided no reason for the shuffle. No other changes were made to the cabinet or other government posts.
The government sponsored Sudanese Media Center (SMC) website reported newly appointed NISS chief held a meeting with heads of the departments at his agency and that Gosh was present.
Gosh expressed thanks and gratitude to the NISS employees for the work they have done during his tenure while Abbas praised the work done by his ex-boss.
The timing of the decision coincided with the day before the weekend and a week before the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan.
The decision appears to put an abrupt end to the ambitious career of the influential figure who was part of the Islamist movement that took power in 1989 after overthrowing the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Al-Sadiq Al-Mahdi.
During the early years of the Islamist backed regime Gosh’s name surfaced as a security figure taking part in the crackdown on political opposition using ruthless torture techniques.
He was one of three senior security figures who were demoted in response to regional pressure following the failed assassination attempt on Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in 1995 at the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.
It is widely believe that Sudan’s security bureau planned for the attempt on Mubarak’s life that almost brought the country on the verge of war with its Northern neighbor.
Gosh was also described by John Prendergast, former adviser to the White House during Bill Clinton’s administration as “Osama bin Laden’s main escort while the Al Qaeda leader lived in Sudan [1990-1996], helping him incubate the commercial infrastructure that would finance future terrorist strikes,”.
In 2006, Hassan Al-Turabi, the former ideological power behind the Sudanese regime in the 1990’s, explained in detail the role Khartoum played in targeting Mubarak’s convoy and disclosed several of those who took part were killed by the security bureau to hide any evidence.
A few years later Gosh was appointed to lead a Sudanese military manufacturing compound after which he made it to be the director of the internal security services.
Later the internal and external security bureaus were integrated into what was later known as NISS and Gosh was picked to be its first director.
The new NISS director maintained a low profile and most Sudanese did not what their spy chief looked like until 2005 when Gosh paid a visit to the hiding place of the Secretary General of the communist Party Mohamed Ibrahim Nugd who went underground in 1994 to evade capture by the government.
The Sudanese media showed pictures of Gosh talking to Nugd on a couch primarily to demonstrate the long reaching hand of NISS in nabbing a man who disappeared for over 11 years.
In the same year the intelligence chief gave a rare interview to Reuters and made the first confession of its kind that the government armed the notorious Janjaweed militias alleged to have committed mass atrocities in Sudan’s Western region of Darfur. He added that they would not make the same mistake in the country’s east where the local populating began to take arms against the central government.
Prior to this interview, the Sudanese government has vehemently denied any links to the militias. Furthermore, Gosh acknowledged that human right violations took place in Darfur and stressed that those responsible would be brought to justice.
But many human rights and Darfur advocacy groups say that Gosh himself should be prosecuted for his role in the Darfur conflict which the UN said led to the death of 300,000 people and displacing 2.5 million primarily from African tribes.
A report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) in 2005 titled ‘Entrenching Impunity’ alleged that Gosh had overall responsibility over the security functions in Darfur.
HRW cited an unidentified senior Sudanese army official as saying that “he power is in Salah Gosh. He can overrule the army and military intelligence”.
The application by the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor requesting the arrest of the Sudanese president last year accused Gosh of “working closely” to execute Bashir’s plans to exterminate the African population in Darfur. However, he was not named as a suspect by the Hague based court.
Another aspect of Gosh’s career was revealed by the Los Angeles Times in 2005 as a main point of contact for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) war on terror in the Middle East.
The newspaper reported that the CIA ferried Gosh aboard a private charter jet into Washington for secret meetings to discuss cooperation on tracking down Islamic extremists groups leveraging on Khartoum’s extensive dealings with them.
A senior US official commented on the visit saying that Gosh “has strategic knowledge and information about a critical region in the war on terror. The information he has is of substantial value to law enforcement, the intelligence community and the US government as a whole, and this relationship will be of both current and future value,”.
The news of Gosh’s presence drew an uproar in Washington even among government agencies and lawmakers who said that the government is acting hypocritically by receiving a man accuse of orchestrating genocide.
The US Justice Department even deliberated on the possibility of arresting Gosh for his role in the Darfur killings.
The mounting criticism caused then CIA director Porter Goss at the time to scrap his scheduled meeting with his Sudanese counterpart. Gosh was subsequently denied entry into the US later for medical treatment from his chronic heart condition.
The news was equally met with shock and dismay in Sudan particularly in light of the US led invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, which fueled anti-American sentiment across the region.
It was ironic for a government condemned by Washington of conducting genocide in Darfur to be seeking its help under the table.
In 2007, the Los Angeles Times made a breathtaking revelation by reporting that the Sudanese intelligence has been actively assisting the CIA in spying on insurgents fighting US forces inside Iraq.
The Sudanese government and the NISS specifically startled by the disclosure and the damage it could do, rushed to deny the story saying that all cooperation with CIA is taking place “within Sudanese borders aimed mainly at protecting US citizens, their installations and safety inside the country”.
The NISS said that they have not provided any help to the CIA in neither Iraq nor Somalia.
But the press release contrasted sharply with the Sudanese foreign minister remarks to the Los Angeles Times in 2005 acknowledging that the NISS “served as the eyes and ears of the CIA in Somalia,”.
In 2007 Gosh in an interview with Al-Ahdath newspaper from Libya said that his cooperation with the CIA “helped avert devastating measures [by US administration] against Sudan,”.
The remarks appeared to be directed towards Islamic hardliners within the regime who decry the help given to the US “to kill their Muslim brothers”.
Gosh’s public profile in Sudan heightened and his public appearances became more frequent including a ceremony to celebrate Sudanese artists and musicians.
However, many public failures have marked his last two years particularly his handling of Chadian opposition groups that were residing in Sudan’s borders with Chad.
Gosh is believed to have promised the Sudanese president to get the opposition groups up to speed to topple the Chadian government headed by president Idriss Deby to cut the support he provides to Darfur Justice and Equality Movement.
Two attacks in 2006 and 2008 by Chadian rebels on Ndjamena were foiled placing Gosh in an awkward position internally.
Osman Mirghani, a columnist Sudanese columnist Osman Mirghani of the daily Al-Sudani newspaper wrote questioning Gosh on the fate of the money spent on 300 Land Cruiser trucks given to the Chadian opposition by Khartoum.
“What is the point of this long standing and costly investment in Chadian opposition?” Mirghani asked.
Shortly afterwards Gosh lashed out at journalists at a press conference in what was believed to be an indirect response to Mirghani’s column.
The spy chief, who appeared shaken at the press conference, said that some journalists want to be “fake heroes” by accusing the government of supporting Chadian rebels describing that as “cheap”.
“We know that there are some journalists who are in contact with some embassies and receiving money from them,” he added.
From that point on, the NISS stepped up its censorship of Sudanese newspapers to take out any reports on the issue of Chad among many other topics.
In 2007, the NISS upon personal orders from Gosh, arrested Mubarak al-Fadil, chairman of the Umma Reform and Renewal opposition party over allegations of planning sabotage actions in the country with the help of Libya and the US.
However, Al-Fadil was freed months later and it was reported in the London based Al-Sharq Al-Awsat newspaper that the intelligence relied on to arrest Al-Fadil and the others was baseless.
In May 2008, the intelligence director came under fire for withholding information from the army on the attack of Darfur JEM on the capital. The Sudanese president resisted demands by senior army figures to sack Gosh who defended his position by saying that the military was infiltrated by the rebel group and no information can be released to it.
Over the last year there were informal reports in the Sudanese capital that Bashir has became mistrusting of Gosh along with 2nd Vice President Ali Osman Taha particularly after the initiation of the criminal case against the Sudanese head of state by the ICC.
Sources say that Bashir discovered that his office was wiretapped and immediately suspected that Gosh and Taha were behind it.
Another story widely circulated kin Khartoum is that Gosh confiscated a suitcase containing a large sum of money from Bashir’s second wife Widad Babiker at the airport and reported the story to his boss who fell out with his wife and some said that they were briefly separated.
Neither of these reports could be verified by Sudan Tribune.
However, Gosh won strong backing from Bashir against any provisions in the draft bill of the National Security law currently deliberated restricting the powers of the NISS.
Gosh in return warned any party inside Sudan supporting ICC warrant against Bashir that that they will have “their hands, limbs and head chopped off”.
Last December, the NISS arrested and tortured three well-known human right activists interrogating them on their links to the ICC.
Gosh was present in most of the foreign trips made by Bashir particularly since the ICC arrest warrant as well as rounds of Darfur peace talks and dialogues with France and the US.
His work appeared to have paid off when US special envoy to Sudan Scott Gration told lawmakers last month that there is nothing that justify having Khartoum being on the list of the state sponsors of terrorism.
He also said that Sudan has been cooperating in stopping the weapon smugglers heading towards Gaza through Egypt. Gration did not elaborate on whether an Israeli strike a Gaza bound arms convoy in East Sudan was carried with the knowledge of the Sudanese government or no.
It remains to be seen what the reaction of Washington would be to the sacking of its closest allies over the last decade.
The new NISS boss is an engineering graduate who joined the bureau in 1992 and was promoted through the years until his appointment in 2004 as Gosh’s deputy.
The move will likely send shockwaves through Sudan’s political arena on the implications of the change on other senior figures including VP Taha who maintained an uneasy relation with Bashir since 2007.
(ST)