Sudan’s Military Council Arrests Sit-In Assailants

TEHRAN (defapress) – Sudan's Transitional Military Council (TMC) said perpetrators of an armed attack on the protesters at a recent sit-in in capital Khartoum have been apprehended.

News ID: 77472

Date: 19 May 2019 - 13:27

Deputy Chairman of TMC Mohamed Hamdan Daqlu said on Saturday that the armed perpetrators who attacked and killed protesters in Khartoum on May 13 have been arrested.

"The perpetrators who committed Monday's massacre have been arrested, with judicial confession, and they will be shown on TV satellite channels within today or tomorrow," Xinhua quoted Daqlu as saying.

Anyone who committed a crime in Sudan would be punished, he said, reiterating the importance of continued dialogue for a final deal to end the political conflicts in the African nation.

Shortly after the ruling TMC and the opposition forces reached an agreement on a transitional authority on May 13, a number of gunmen dressed in uniform attacked protesters at a sit-in area in Khartoum, killing six protesters and an army officer and injuring more than a hundred others.

The military council and the opposition alliance that spearheaded the protests, the Declaration of Freedom and Change Forces (DFCF), said on Wednesday that they have reached an agreement for a three-year transition to a fully civilian administration.

Meanwhile, at least 11 Sudanese political parties have rejected the agreement on the power transition period, arguing that the transition period deal could marginalize many political actors.

The opponents also believe that the current agreement between the military council and the DFCF is nullifying the previous peace deals, like the ones signed in Doha and Abuja in the past, and would steer the country towards civilian dictatorship.

Thousands of protesters have been holding a sit-in outside the army headquarters in Khartoum for weeks, demanding that the army generals, who took power after toppling longtime ruler Omar al-Bashir on April 11, step down.

The army generals had initially insisted on a two-year transition period, while the protest leaders wanted four years.

In demonstrations on Friday, Sudanese protest leaders denounced the ruling military council's 72-hour suspension of talks over a peaceful transfer of power to civilian rule as a "regrettable" setback to efforts to forge a new democratic era following the overthrow of Bashir.

The Alliance for Freedom and Change, the umbrella group leading the protest movement and negotiating the transfer of power with Sudan's Transitional Military Council (TMC), said in a statement on Thursday that the generals' move "ignores the developments achieved in negotiations so far".

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