Darfur rebels unseat top leaders: spokesman
CAIRO, June 11 (AFP) — A group of rebels from the Sudan Liberation Movement have unseated two of the SLA’s top leaders, a spokesman said Friday.
Amer Mahmud Adam Fadallah told AFP that SLA leader Abdel Wahid Mohamed Nour and Secretary General Mani Minawi were removed early this month.
He said the decision to oust them followed a meeting of some 560 SLA members in northern Darfur, who unnanimously voted in favor of a motion to remove Minawi and Nour from their leadership positions.
“Minawi was the movement’s real leader; he led it single-handedly and in an undemocratic manner, therefore it was decided that he should be removed,” said Fadallah
He added that the meeting was chaired by Ali Hamid Nour Shoubar, attended by “political and military figures and took place at the rebel held Wadi Hawar area in northern Darfur.”
The meeting also agreed to endorse the principles of “democracy and transparency in managing the affairs of the movement,” Fadallah said.
He said it also “entrusted a collective leadership comprising competent figures with responsibility for the movement’s military and political wings until the convening of a genereal congress to a elect a new leader for the movement.”
Fadallah denied that the move amounted to a split within the movement, saying that all were in agreement that Minawi and Nour should go.
He further stressed that the group’s military wing was united under the command of Khatir Toukhla Abdel A’al.
Participants at the meeting also resolved to continue the “armed struggle” until the demands of the people of Darfur are met, Fadallah said.
But the SLA would repect the ceasefire it signed with the Sudanese government in April, despite the government’s “repeated violations” of the truce.
The SLA and its sister group, the Justice and Equality Movement, took up arms in February 2003, complaining that their region had been neglected by successive administrations.
According to certain estimates, more than 10,000 people have died in the conflict, some one million displaced from their homes and a further 100,000 forced into exile in neighboring Chad.
The United Nations has described the situation in Darfur has the world’s worst humanitarian crisis at the moment.