Omar al-Bashir

Biography

Omar al-Bashir was born in 1944 in Hosh Bannaga, a village near Shendi north of Khartoum, to a family of the Ja'alin. He trained at military colleges in Sudan and Egypt and made his career in the Sudanese Army, much of it with airborne units; he served as military attaché in the United Arab Emirates in the mid-1970s, commanded a parachute brigade from 1981 and later the 8th Infantry Brigade.

On 30 June 1989, as a brigadier backed by the National Islamic Front, he led the coup that overthrew the elected government of Sadiq al-Mahdi. He ruled first as chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council for National Salvation and from October 1993 as president, dissolving the council and banning rival parties. He won elections in 1996, 2000, 2010 and 2015 that observers considered flawed, and in 1998 founded the National Congress Party. His government signed the 2005 peace agreement ending the Second Sudanese Civil War, which led to South Sudan's independence in 2011, while the war in Darfur caused mass deaths and displacement.

In March 2009 the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for his arrest for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur, adding genocide charges in 2010; he was the first sitting head of state the court had indicted. After months of mass protests the army removed him on 11 April 2019. He was jailed in Khartoum, convicted of corruption and money laundering in December 2019, and put on trial in 2020 for the 1989 coup.