More than half a million Sudanese, both civilian and military, are preparing to sue ousted president Omar al-Bashir for arbitrarily sacking them to empower Islamists during his rule.
A specialized committee put together for the arbitrarily dismissed, in a press conference held in Khartoum, said it documented 600,000 civilians and military cases.
Hundreds of thousands were laid off work by the National Islamic Front, Sudan’s re-branded Muslim Brotherhood, after it took over control of the African country in 1989.
The military coup occurred in Sudan on June 30, 1989 against the democratically-elected government of Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi and President Ahmed al-Mirghani. The coup was led by Bashir who took power in its aftermath and would go on to rule the country for the next 30 years until he was overthrown in 2019.
Under Bashir, loyalists were hired in order to form a deep state strong enough to back the Islamists in the country.
In October, the transitional council of ministers issued a resolution establishing a committee to “consider the cases of the arbitrarily dismissed members of the civil service from June 1989 to December 2018.”
The committee has voiced its intentions to sue Bashir and a number of officials from his administration.
Since 1993, the US State Department has designated Sudan as a state sponsor of terrorism over Khartoum hosting al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and later being involved in terrorist operations against US assets.
Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok is expected to leave for Washington in early December for talks with US officials, including President Donald Trump, on joint issues, in addition to removing Sudan from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.
