Sudan’s prosecutor general has ordered the questioning of ousted president Omar al-Bashir over money-laundering and “financing terrorism”, the official SUNA news agency reports.
“The acting public prosecutor general Al-Waleed Sayyed Ahmed has ordered the questioning of former president Omar al-Bashir… under anti-money laundering and financing terrorism laws,” SUNA said.
A source in the prosecutor general’s office confirmed the state media report to the press.
Bashir, who swept to power in an Islamist-backed coup in 1989, ruled Sudan with an iron fist for three decades.
During his rule the country was placed on Washington’s list of state sponsors of terrorism over its alleged links with Islamist militants.
Al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden lived in Sudan between 1992 and 1996.
In October 2017, Washington lifted a 20-year-old trade embargo imposed on Sudan, but kept the country on the terrorism blacklist.
Since last year however, the two countries have been in talks to remove the country from the blacklist, but these have now been suspended since Bashir was ousted by the army on April 11.
“That is a conversation that we are not able to engage at the moment,” a top State Department official, Makila James, told AFP last month during her visit to Khartoum.
“All of that is suspended as we try to assess what is the reality on the ground, what is the way forward,” she said.
Last month Sudan’s army ruler General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan said that more than 113 million dollars worth of cash in three currencies had been seized from Bashir’s residence.
He said a team of police, army and security agents found seven million euros ($7.8 million), $350,000 and five billion Sudanese pounds ($105 million) during a search at Bashir’s home.
Vast crowds join ‘million-strong march’
Huge crowds of demonstrators flocked to join a “million-strong” march Thursday outside Sudan’s army headquarters to demand that the ruling military council hand power to a civilian administration.
Protesters gathered in greater numbers than recent days, packing all the roads and bridges leading to the central Khartoum complex, said correspondents on the scene.
Talks between protest leaders and the generals over transfer of power remained deadlocked.