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Former President Omar al-Bashir received $90 million in cash from Saudi royals, an investigator told a court at the opening yesterday of the deposed Sudanese strongman’s corruption trial.
Bashir, who was forced from power by months of protests in April after 30 years in power, sat in a metal cage wearing a traditional white gown. His relatives chanted “Allahu Akbar” (God is greatest) as proceedings got under way in the Khartoum court where he arrived in a huge military convoy.
He faces a raft of charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide from the International Criminal Court over his role in the Darfur war but yesterday’s trial is over graft allegations. Large amounts of cash were found at this residence after he was toppled and the investigator said the case brought forward to the court probed some of that money.
“The accused told us that the money was part of a sum of $25 million sent to him by Prince Mohammed bin Salman to be used outside of the state budget,” investigator Ahmed Ali said.
According to him Bashir had said he also received two previous payments of $35 million and $30 million from Saudi King Abdullah, who died in 2015. “This money was not part of the state budget and I was the one who authorised its spending,” the investigator quoted Bashir as saying. Bashir had said the Saudi money was exchanged and spent and that he could not remember how nor did he have documents providing further details, he added. Bashir looked calm during the nearly three-hour session, which an AFP photographer and correspondent attended. The next hearing was scheduled for August 24.
In May, Sudan’s prosecutor general also said Bashir had been charged over killings during the anti-regime protests which eventually led to his ouster.
London-based rights watchdog Amnesty International has warned however that the corruption trial should not distract from his Darfur indictments.
Meanwhile, the unveiling of Sudan’s sovereign council, which will govern the country’s transition to civilian rule, has been postponed until today, military rulers said. The line-up was due to have been announced on Sunday, in line with a deal reached between the Transitional Military Council and an opposition coalition.
The TMC, which took over from Omar al-Bashir’s regime after he was forced from power in April, issued a statement yesterday saying that its own dissolution and the formation of the sovereign council were postponed for 48 hours.
It said the extension was granted “at the request of the Forces for Freedom and Change” after they came back on some of the five names they put forward on Sunday.
