The special court trying Sudan’s ousted leader, Omar al-Bashir, alongside 27 key Islamist figures, rejected the defense’s request to invoke the statute of limitations to acquit defendants from the charges facing them.
Bashir and some of his senior aides, who include former Vice President Ali Osman Taha, Ahmed Haroun, Ali Al-Haj, and Ibrahim Al Sanousi, are being tried for "plotting" the 1989 coup that brought him to power.
Judge Issam al-Din Mohammad Ibrahim, who is presiding over the court conducting the trial, ruled that actions committed since the coup d'état represented a continuous crime that ended on April 11, 2019, until the Bashir regime was overthrown.
He explained that the period covered by the statute of limitations starts as of April 11, not from when the coup was launched.
Judge Ibrahim added that the lawsuit facing the defendants in relation to the ongoing coup crime was based on the 1983 Criminal Penal Code, the Constitutional Declaration, and the Sudanese Armed Forces Act.
Legal representative of the claimants Mr. Maez Hadra said that the judge’s ruling stipulates proceeding with trying the culprits.
It is worth noting that some of Bashir’s aides are being tried in absentia.
Hadra pointed out that the court's decision annulled the argument requesting to close the case for the lapse of over 10 years since June 30, 1989, when the crime was committed.
Bashir’s defense had submitted several requests to drop the case by invoking the statute of limitations, based on the 1991 Criminal Procedure Law.
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