SUDAN’S ousted tyrant Omar al-Bashir appeared in court today on charges relating to the 1989 coup that brought him to power.

The military overthrew Mr Bashir in April 2019 amid massive public protests against his rule. Months after the overthrow, army chiefs and democratic forces agreed to set up a transitional government, but revolutionaries now accuse the army of refusing to concede real power.

Mr Bashir has been jailed in Khartoum since his overthrow, facing several separate trials related to his rule. Transitional authorities have announced that he will be handed over to the International Criminal Court to face war crimes and genocide charges related to the Darfur conflict, but no action has been taken to do so.

Sudan’s Communist Party, which played a leading role in the uprising that prompted Mr Bashir’s removal, warned that trials for leading figures in the old regime were a sham.

“None of the leaders in the security forces want democracy,” an article on the party’s website declared. 

Sudan is in the midst of economic crisis but the military is fixated on appropriating “the lion’s share of Sudan’s resources.” Military and security forces, including the “rapid support forces” paramilitaries formerly known as the Janjaweed militias, controll companies that “produce and export gold, gum arabic, weapons and agricultural products and import  fuel, wheat and cars,” it warned, adding that “the forces of freedom and change are divided.”

The Janjaweed had previously mostly profited from gold and human trafficking, the party said, but is now obtaining huge tracts of agricultural land.