Sudanese authorities have found a mass grave believed to contain the bodies of 28 army officers shot in a foiled coup attempt against then-Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir in 1990, the public prosecutor said on Thursday.
It was the second al-Bashir-era mass grave uncovered in as many months.
Al-Bashir’s repressive rule collapsed last year, when the military ousted him after months of street protests.
Photo: Reuters
The transitional government, jointly led by civilians and army generals, is working toward democratic elections and trying to hold al-Bashir’s government accountable for alleged crimes committed over the 30 years that he ruled Sudan.
“Evidence indicates that the mass grave is most likely where the bodies of the officers lay who were killed and buried in a ruthless manner,” the public prosecutor said in a statement.
A team of 23 experts took three weeks to identify and uncover the site, which remains heavily guarded, it said.
There was no immediate comment from al-Bashir’s defense lawyers.
The 28 officers who sought to overthrow al-Bashir were arrested and executed in murky circumstances in the spring of 1990. Al-Bashir had been a little-known general when he vaulted to power in a military-backed Islamist coup the year before, toppling the democratically elected government.
Al-Bashir, who is already imprisoned for corruption and facing several other trials, appeared in court earlier this week over charges of plotting the bloodless 1989 coup that brought him to power.
In the decades that followed, the government hosted Osama bin Laden, among other militants, rolled back personal freedoms, oversaw a bloody counterinsurgency campaign in the western Darfur region and brutally quashed protests.
The discovery of two mass graves, the one found earlier holding the bodies of student conscripts shot or beaten to death after trying to flee a military camp, were a reminder of the scale of alleged human rights violations during al-Bashir’s rule.
“Such crimes will not pass without a fair trial,” the public prosecutor said, addressing the families of victims.
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