Sudan hands over Boko Haram suspect to Nigeria: Interpol

November 1, 2015 (KHARTOUM) – The director of the International Criminal Police Organisation (Interpol) bureau in Khartoum Col. Muatasim Abdel-Rahman al-Kagan disclosed that Sudan has extradited a member of the Islamist rebel group Boko Haram to Nigeria.

Aminu Sadiq Ogwuche was arrested in May 2014 in Khartoum. He was fingered as the mastermind of the 14 April 2014 bomb blast in Nyanya, Abuja which killed at least 75 people and injured 200 others,.

The Sudanese government had previously said there are 17 conditions to be met before handing over the suspect to Nigeria including amending the bilateral agreement on extradition of criminals.

Ogwuche, a student of Arabic language at Khartoum’s International University of Africa, is a British-born Nigerian who was a former serviceman with the Nigerian army. He is known to have deserted the army in 2006.

Boko Haram, whose name means “Western education is sinful”, has waged a six-year campaign of bombings, massacres and abductions that has killed thousands in its drive to impose an Islamic state on Africa’s most populous nation.

Al-Kagan also announced that Sudanese police has been linked to police in 190 countries in order to monitor various crimes around the globe particularly terrorism crimes.

MONEY LAUNDERING CRIMES

Meanwhile, the justice ministry undersecretary Ahmed Abas al-Razam denied existence of terrorism and money laundering crimes originating in Sudan saying the recorded cases of those crimes in the country are classified as ‘transient”.

Al-Razam, who spoke in a press conference on Sunday, described the basis of the Sudanese law as strong, pointing to existence of a special prosecution office for the money laundering crimes.

The director of the financial information unit, Hydar Abbas Hussein, for his part, said they a suspected case of money laundering has been referred to court, pointing that courts are currently considering similar other cases but he refrained from revealing the amounts of money involved in those cases.

He pointed that will make a minor change to the anti-money laundry regulation, underscoring that the entire Sudanese laws are very effective.

Hussein demanded informing the exporters and importers of the recent decision to remove Sudan’s name from the list of countries that have deficiencies in their legal and regulatory framework as related to combating money laundering and financing of terrorism.

Last Friday, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an international agency on combating money laundering, terrorist financing, removed Sudan from its blacklist, saying the east-African nation is no longer a threat to the integrity of the international financial system.

(ST)