Sudan court sentences rebel leader to death: agency
KHARTOUM (Reuters) – A Sudanese court handed a death sentence on Saturday to a leader of Darfur’s most powerful rebel group, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), saying he violated the constitution and fomented war against the state, Sudan’s state news agency said.
Al-Tom Hamed Tutu was captured in Southern Kordofan state, where fighting broke out in June between the Sudanese army and groups seeking to wrest control of the region from Khartoum.
JEM, which is mostly active in neighbouring Darfur, joined up with a branch of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) to attack government troops in Southern Kordofan in July as the conflict gradually escalated to include artillery and aircraft.
According to Sudan news agency SUNA, Tutu was also accused of wearing a military uniform with an SPLA badge.
JEM condemned the verdict against Tutu on Saturday, saying he is a military and political leader of a movement that the Sudanese government recognizes and negotiates with.
"The movement calls on governments, rights and humanitarian groups and all people who love peace to share their responsibilities and intervene quickly to save leader Hamed from hanging by the racist governing gang," JEM said in a statement.
Southern Kordofan straddles the north and South Sudan, which
formally seceded from Khartoum on July 9 under a 2005 peace deal that ended decades of civil war.
Many fighters who sided with the SPLA against Khartoum remained on the northern side of the new border.
Earlier this month the United Nations called for an inquiry into reports of human rights abuses in Southern Kordofan that it said could amount to war crimes. Khartoum dismissed the accusations as "unfounded".
Activists and some aid workers have accused the Khartoum government of starting the fighting to stamp its authority on the key oil-producing state after South Sudan broke away.
A separate insurgency has raged in Darfur since 2003. While down from its peak, a surge in violence there since December has forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes.
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Sudanese Court Sentences Rebel Leader Al-Tom Hamed to Death by Hanging
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By Salma El Wardany and Maram Mazen – Aug 26, 2011 8:08 PM ET
A Sudanese court sentenced to death by hanging a leader in the rebel Justice and Equality Movement, which carried out attacks against the army in Southern Kordofan, state-run SUNA news agency reported late yesterday.
The ruling against Al-Tom Hamed was issued by a court in Kadugli, the capital of Southern Kordofan state for “undermining the constitutional order, stirring up war against the state and wearing the military uniform”, SUNA said.
Hamed was captured by the Sudanese army when JEM, the biggest rebel group in Sudan’s western region of Darfur, carried out joint military operations in July for the first time with rebels from the northern branch of South Sudan’s ruling party, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, against the Sudanese army. Southern Kordofan borders the war-torn region of Darfur.
Fighting broke out in Southern Kordofan a month before South Sudan’s July 9 independence from Sudan, a move that capped the 2005 peace agreement that ended a two-decade civil war between north and south Sudan. Southern Kordofan is Sudan’s only oil-producing state, accounting for 115,000 barrels a day, according to Sudan’s minister of state for oil, Ali Ahmed Osman.
The Khartoum-based agency said al-Tom admitted receiving “financial and logistic support from the government of South Sudan,” which also helped him enter Southern Kordofan through the newly independent region.
War Crime
”We are sad that the Sudanese government reaches this level,” El Taher El Feki, chairman of JEM’s legislative council, said in a telephone interview from a West African country he didn’t want to identify. ”Brother Hamed is a prisoner of war, and the government will be committing another war crime if they implement that ruling.”
JEM and the SPLM’s northern branch had urged the Sudanese government to treat three rebel commanders who were captured in that assault, including Hamed, as prisoners of war, the groups said in a July 20 statement on JEM’s website.
Following the operation, the two groups pledged to ”continue to defend the innocent people” in Southern Kordofan ”against the genocide regime in Khartoum,” according to the July 20 statement.
A wider war may erupt in Sudan if clashes in Southern Kordofan aren’t resolved, and it would be “coordinated” against the Sudanese army, Malik Agar, governor of Sudan’s border Blue Nile state and the head of the northern branch of South Sudan’s ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, said on July 3.
Spreading War
The war could spread from Blue Nile state on the Ethiopian border in the east to Darfur in the west, Agar said.
The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights called in an Aug. 15 report for an investigation into possible crimes against humanity and war crimes, allegedly committed mainly by government forces, during clashes in the state with insurgents from the SPLM’s northern branch.
Both Sudanese President Umar al-Bashir and his governor in Southern Kordofan, Ahmed Haroun, are wanted by the International Criminal Court over allegations they were involved in war crimes in the western region of Darfur, where insurgents took arms against the government in 2003.
Clashes and airstrikes by the Sudanese army in Southern Kordofan forced more than 73,000 people to flee their homes, according to the UN.
To contact the reporter on this story: Salma El Wardany in Khartoum at selwardany; Maram Mazen in Khartoum at mmazen.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Antony Sguazzin at asguazzin.
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