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Coup generals bring back party of Sudan's ousted dictator

Members of deposed dictator Omar al-Bashir's party have been appointed to high state positions and reinstated throughout the government.

Sudanese Foreign Minister Ibrahim Ghandour speaks to the press in Khartoum, on March 10, 2018.
Sudanese Foreign Minister Ibrahim Ghandour speaks to the press following a meeting with his Qatari counterpart in Khartoum, on March 10, 2018. — ASHRAF SHAZLY/AFP via Getty Images

After a long period in the shadows, Ibrahim Ghandour, former head of Sudan’s outlawed National Congress Party (NCP) that was founded by deposed dictator Omar al-Bashir, reappeared on camera on April 8 to express his support for last October’s military coup that put an end to the country’s fragile democratic transition. Dressed in a white robe and matching headdress, Ghandour claimed in an interview with Al Jazeera that the seizure of power by the coup generals was, as they claim, a step in the corrective path. And he declared, without offering consistent arguments, that the situation in Sudan has since then improved.

His public appearance came just a day after news broke that Ghandour, who had served as foreign minister under Bashir, was to be released from prison where he had been since mid-2020, after being acquitted of multiple charges, including financing terrorism and plotting the assassination of former Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, the NCP said in a statement.

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