Thousands of Inmates Escape From Prisons Around Sudan

According to Radio Dabanga and other Sudanese media, thousands of inmates have escaped from jails taking advantage of the intensification of fighting between the Sudanese Army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

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On Wednesday, the Sudanese Army affirmed that former dictator Omar al Bashir and some of his high-level officials, who are wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes, have not escaped and remain detained in a military hospital in the Umm Dorman city.

Previously, social networks circulated a recording attributed to former Interior Minister Ahmed Haruon in which he claimed to have escaped from Kobar prison.

Since the overthrow of Al Bashir in April 2019, some twenty officials of his regime remained in that jail after being tried for illicit enrichment and for having carried out a coup in 1989.

Currently, however, the Sudanese Army claims that Al Bashir, former Vice President Bakri Hasan Saleh, former Defense Minister Abdelrahim Hussein, and two other former officials are still being held in a military hospital under the custody of the Judicial Police.

The ICC demands the surrender of Al Bashir, Hussein and Haroun for their responsibility in the crimes committed during the civil war that took place in Darfur between 2003 and 2008, a bloody period in which at least 300,000 people died.

In June 2021, the Sudanese transitional government pledged to hand over the Al Bashir officials to the ICC. This, however, did not happen because that transitional government was overthrown by another military coup in October 2021.

After Haroun's recording was posted online, the Armed Forces accused the RSF of attacking several prisons in Khartoum and other cities to allow the escape of inmates and to provoke a state of insecurity in the country.