Sudan investigating ousted president Bashir

KHARTOUM - Sudan's public prosecutor has begun investigating ousted President Omar al-Bashir on charges of money laundering and possession of large sums of foreign currency without legal grounds, a judicial source said on Saturday.

The source said that military intelligence had searched Bashir's home and found suitcases loaded with more than $351,000 and six million euros, as well as five million Sudanese pounds.

"The chief public prosecutor... ordered the (former) president detained and quickly questioned in preparation to put him on trial," a judicial source told Reuters.

"The public prosecution will question the former president in Kobar prison," the source added. Bashir has not been questioned yet, said the source. Two of his brothers were also detained on allegations of corruption, the source said.

Relatives could not be immediately reached on Saturday for comment about the investigation.

Bashir, who is also being sought by the International Criminal Court (ICC) over allegations of genocide in the country's western Darfur region, was ousted on April 11 by the military following months of protests against his rule and had been held at a presidential residence.

Bashir's family said this week that the former president had been moved to the high-security Kobar prison in Khartoum.

Hassan Bashir, a professor of political science at the University of Neelain, said the measures against Bashir are intended as a message to other figures associated with his rule that they are not above the law.

"The trial is a step that the military council wants to take to satisfy the protesters by presenting al-Bashir for trial," he said.

Bashir survived several armed rebellions, economic crises, and attempts by the West to turn him into a pariah during his 30-year rule before he was toppled in a military coup.

At a sit-in outside Sudan's Ministry of Defence that began on April 6, protesters stood besides posters of Bashir that called on the ICC to put him on trial.

The Sudanese Professionals' Association, leading the protests, has called for holding Bashir and members of his administration to account, a purge of corruption and cronyism and easing an economic crisis that worsened during Bashir's last years in power.

On Wednesday, Sudan's transitional military council ordered the central bank to review financial transfers since April 1 and to seize "suspect" funds, according to state news agency SUNA.

The council also ordered the "suspension of the transfer of ownership of any shares until further notice and for any large or suspect transfers of shares or companies to be reported" to authorities.

Reuters