Khartoum — North Darfur governor Osman Youssef Kibir announced Saturday the death of the leader of Sudan Liberation Movement for Justice (SLMJ), Ali Karbino Ali Karbino, following clashes with the government forces in the state.
Kibir said Karbino was killed with 12 other rebels on Friday, after he launched an attack on Alquba area north of Kutum. He stressed the Sudanese army repulsed the attack and seized 31 armed vehicles.
The governor pointed, in a statement released on Saturday that several SLMJ fighters were held captive.
A Sudan Tribune reporter in El-Fasher obtained pictures showing Karbino’s body since the midday but the state governor and the Sudanese army confirmed the death only in the evening.
Sources say Arab pastoralists from the area and elements of the Border Guards militia affiliated to the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) attacked the SLMJ fighters on Friday following the alleged looting of camels belonging to the herders.
10 nomads were killed and several others wounded.
In statements to Ashorooq TV, the commander of the Sudanese army force in Alquba, colonel Alnour Ahmed Adam, confirmed the death of Karbino and showed 30 vehicles and weapons captured from the rebels.
Adam also said they captured 15 rebels, adding that his force was monitoring the movements of the rebels and managed to attack them Friday in Alquba.
Karbino joined Minni Minnawi following the historical split of the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) in November 2005. However following the signing of May 2006 Darfur peace agreement, he joined a rebel coalition led by the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM).
In 2011, the late rebel commander, joint the Liberation and Justice Movement (LJM) of Tijani al-Sissi. However he defected following the signing of the Doha Document for Peace in Darfur (DDPD) in July 2011.
Last March and April, his group carried out joint military attacks with SLM-Minni Minnawi in South and North Darfur.
SAF spokesperson, al-Sawarmi Khaled Saad, on Thursday announced that SAF clashed with a group from the SLM-MM in Ed al-Zalat and al-Managim areas north east of Kutum in North Darfur state.
He said they inflicted heavy casualties in lives and equipment on the rebels and seized 22 armed vehicles, 2 rocket launchers, and 3 cannons besides small arms.
Clashes between Minnawi fighters and Sudanese army and government militia in March and April 2014 displaced over 81,000 people in South and North Darfur, according to the UN agencies.
Meriam Ibrahim faces up to seven years in jail over new offences levelled at her by the Sudanese regime, MailOnline revealed on Thursday.
The mother-of-two was told the devastating news after being detained as she tried to fly out of the African country hours after a death sentence against her was dropped.
Dr Ibrahim, 27, was charged with obtaining a false travel document and giving false information to immigration officials – and banned from leaving Sudan.
The move is another twist of the knife as Dr Ibrahim tries to get to America with her two children where she can live with her husband Daniel Wani, a US citizen, from Manchester, New Hampshire.
Instead she is back in a cell with her son Martin, 21, and daughter Maya, one month.
Mr Wani is also locked up with them at the Al Sheradee police station in Khartoum after being confronted at Khartoum airport by 40 agents of the feared National Intelligence and Security Services.
It is believed they were trying to travel to Washington DC and Sudanes media have claimed that the US vice consul was with the family at the airport.
Mr Wani told AFP: “We are worried. That’s why we want to get out of here as soon as possible.”
Dr Ibrahim’s lawyer Shareif Ali Shareif told MailOnline: ‘The authorities do not have the right to hold her. They appear not to want to let her leave Sudan. They are restricting her movements.
“Her husband Daniel and the children are with her in the same cell. Any reports suggesting she has been released are wrong. We need to highlight her plight.”
A diplomatic row has now erupted and the Sudanese Foreign Ministry has summoned the American and South Sudanese ambassadors to explain themselves.
Dr Ibrahim had been granted emergency travel documents by the government of South Sudan to travel there and then on to the US.
*After three days wait in Khartoum, jet returns to Nigeria without suspect
There were strong indications, yesterday, that the security services have commenced a high-level investigation of a monarch in northern Nigeria, suspected to have links with the members of the Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad, which, in English, means, “People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet’s Teachings and Jihad”, otherwise known as Boko Haram.
The investigation followed the intelligence gathered from Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, regarding difficulties being faced by Nigeria in extraditing Aminu-Sadiq Ogwuche, the alleged mastermind of the April 14, 2014, bombing of Nyanya motor-park, near Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory, where over 100 lives were lost.
Sunday Vanguard was made to understand that, penultimate week, the “situation was so embarrassing that the jet, provided by the Nigerian government to convey the suspect from the Sudanese capital, Khatoum, returned after waiting for three days without making a headway in the extradition process”.
Information made available, late last night, from the base of the traditional ruler, Sudan and Abuja, suggested that the focus of the investigation of the monarch had to do with funding and remittances allegedly made with a view to blocking the extradition of Ogwuche.
It was learnt from the multiple high-level sources that the sudden uncooperative disposition of the Sudanese government in the matter “is not unconnected with the influence which the traditional ruler is known to wield in Sudan, as well as his contacts over the years in that Islamic country”.
All efforts to get official confirmation from the National Information Centre, the body saddled with the co-ordination and dissemination of information regarding the war on terror, proved abortive.
However, sources in the intelligence community insisted that a good lead was being followed in the matter concerning the monarch.
“It is something that is very discreet that we are doing but I will neither confirm nor deny to you that we are carrying out investigation to substantiate the claims of complicity by the monarch”, a highly placed source said.
It was discovered that the main reason for the “forceful blocking of the extradition of Ogwuche is to stall any possibility of his return to Nigeria and buckle under intense interrogation and possibly reveal the names of the sponsors of the insurgents”, the source said.
Indeed, the Sudanese Embassy in Nigeria may be playing footsy as our correspondent, Victoria Ojeme, who had earlier interviewed the country’s ambassador to Nigeria, Dr. Tagelsir Mahgoub Ali, spent over four hours at the embassy, on Friday, in her quest to seek clarifications on the extradition saga.
The interview with the ambassador had been published last month and it centred on the anticipated cooperation of Sudan in extraditing the Nyanya bombing suspect to Nigeria.
But, on Friday, all efforts to get the ambassador to clear the air on the monarch’s links to the continuing difficulty being encountered by Nigeria in the extradition of the suspect did not yield positive result.
However, after the over four-hour wait at the embassy, what Sunday Vanguard got was to the effect that the case was being handled by Interpol and it had received a court order from Nigeria while there is an Interpol procedure which, as soon as it is properly followed to the letter, “everything will be in place”.
At press time, Sunday Vanguard was told by a top security source: “President Goodluck Jonathan is ready to go to any length, working with the security agencies, to get to the root of the matter and ensure that Nigerians are spared the terror unleashed by insurgents. Nobody, no matter how highly placed in the society, would be spared and the country is ready to ensure that Ogwuche is brought back to this country to face the consequences of his alleged action”.
`No extradition treaty’
Saturday Vanguard had, yesterday, reported that Sudan’s refusal to extradite Ogwuche followed the alleged intervention of the monarch. He was said to have moved in to stop the extradition of the suspect using the instrumentality of his alma mater, African International University, in Sudan.
Apart from this, Sudan whose President, Omar al-Bashir, is wanted by the International Criminal Court, ICC, for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur, has no bilateral agreement with any country in the world on extradition of criminals.
The monarch, who was said to have used alma mater on several occasions to recommend and secure admission for some Nigerian youths in Sudan, allegedly used his influence to reach out to some old students of the university to frustrate the extradition of Ogwuche possibly to prevent Nigerian security from getting details from the suspect on some of the financiers of Boko Haram terrorists in Nigeria.
Ogwuche was declared wanted by the Department of State Services, DSS, after linking him to the deadly blast in Nyanya which claimed over 75 lives.
However, the arraignment in absentia was again allegedly questioned by the Sudanese government which also doubted the genuineness of the allegations against the suspected terrorist, saying that he (Ogwuche) could have been framed.
The Police Force Public Relations Officer, Frank Mba, had, shortly after the Nyanya bomb blast, hinted that Interpol had issued a red alert for the arrest of Ogwuche, who was once arrested on suspicion of terrorism but released following pressure from human rights groups and the father of the suspect. Also, the Director General of the National Orientation Agency, NOA, and Coordinator of the National Information Centre, NIC, Mike Omeri, had said that Ogwuche, who had been on the wanted list of the security agencies, was arrested in Sudan.
Omeri, who was surrounded then by spokespersons of the military, the police and the DSS, said security agencies in the country were working with their counterparts in Sudan to extradite the suspect, who was a deserter of the Nigerian Army.
Deputy Director in charge of Public Relations at the DSS, Marylyn Ogar, also hinted that security agencies discovered that the suspect had escaped to Sudan, when his father could not produce him.
The discovery of the Ogwuche’s escape to Sudan while five others were arrested prompted the DSS to declare him wanted alongside one other suspect.
“Aminu Sadiq Ogwuche, who was earlier declared wanted, has been arrested in Sudan with the efforts of the army, the DSS, the National Bureau of the Interpol based at the Nigerian Police Force Headquarters and security operatives in Sudan”, Omeri said.
“The efforts of the Interpol, Nigerian Police and the DSS led to his arrest”.
He promised that further information on him and the second suspect would be communicated to the public as they come in.
Ogwuche, an alleged army deserter, was said to have dropped out of university in Britain. He reportedly served in a Nigerian intelligence unit.
(AFP) – UN rights experts voiced outrage Monday at a Sudanese court order to hang a heavily pregnant Christian woman for marrying a Christian man and refusing to renounce her faith.
Meriam Yahia Ibrahim Ishag, a 27-year-old who is eight months pregnant with her second child, was convicted last week under the Islamic sharia law that has been in force in Sudan since 1983 and makes conversions of faith punishable by death.
“This outrageous conviction must be overturned and Ms. Ibrahim must be immediately released,” insisted the UN experts on a range of issues, including on the human rights situation in Sudan, violence against women, minorities and the freedom of religion or belief.
They stressed in a statement that under international law, “the death penalty may only be imposed for the most serious crimes, if at all.”
“Choosing and/or changing one’s religion is not a crime at all. On the contrary, it is a basic human right,” they said.
The young mother was found guilty of apostasy, or publicly renouncing Islam — a faith she never professed — and sentenced to hang after she refused to “return” to the Muslim religion.
Ishag, who was born to a Christian mother and Muslim father, was also sentenced to 100 lashes for “adultery”, for living with the Christian man she has been married to since 2012.
Under Sudan’s interpretation of sharia, a Muslim woman cannot marry a non-Muslim man and any such relationship is regarded as adulterous.
The UN experts said that the right to marry and found a family was a fundamental human right, and voiced particular concern that the heavily pregnant Ishag was being held with her 20-month-old son in “harsh conditions” at the Omdurman’s Women Prison near Khartoum.
“The imposition and enforcement of the death penalty on pregnant women or recent mothers is inherently cruel and leads to a violation of the absolute prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment,” they warned.
They called on Sudan to repeal all discriminatory laws, adding there was a “pressing need to address the pattern of discrimination, abuse and torture as well as the subjugation and denigration of women in the country.”
Sudan has an Islamist government but, other than floggings, extreme sharia law punishments have been rare.
If the death sentence is carried out, Ishag will be the first person executed for apostasy under the 1991 penal code, Christian Solidarity Worldwide, a British-based campaign group, said last week
The investigation followed the intelligence gathered from Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, regarding difficulties being faced by Nigeria in extraditing Aminu-Sadiq Ogwuche, the alleged mastermind of the April 14, 2014, bombing of Nyanya motor-park, near Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory, where over 100 lives were lost.