\n Sudan's army chief and coup leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan on Sunday warned Islamists and the party of ousted president Omar al-Bashir to stay away from the military.\n<\/p>\n
\n Burhan, whose October 2021 coup derailed a transition to civilian rule, was a senior general under Islamist-backed Bashir.\n<\/p>\n
\n The military toppled the long-time autocrat in 2019 amid enormous street protests.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"We are warning the National Congress Party and the Islamists: do not approach the army,\" Burhan said in a speech to the military.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"The army does not belong to any party\".\n<\/p>\n
\n His comments come after some 3,000 protesters marched in the capital Khartoum last week, rejecting United Nations mediation efforts between civilian and military leaders as \"foreign interference\" and calling for a return of Islamist rule.\n<\/p>\n
\n After Bashir's ouster, the then civilian-led authorities passed a law in 2019 ordering the NCP be dissolved, its assets seized and the regime dismantled.\n<\/p>\n
\n But after last year's coup, civilian leaders were arrested, and the military authorities have since returned property to certain NCP ex-leaders, while some Islamist figures have regained positions of power.\n<\/p>\n
\n The NCP said in a statement later Sunday: \"Burhan, you know very well that the armed forces are loyal to the organisation\", referring to Bashir's Islamist regime.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"We will not let you hand over the country to mercenaries and embassy collaborators again,\" it added.\n<\/p>\n
\n Sudan has been mired in a political and economic crisis since last year's coup. Security forces have cracked down on near-weekly protests, resulting in at least 119 deaths, according to pro-democracy medics.\n<\/p>\n
\n Civilian leaders have refused to negotiate with the military before it commits to a timetable for full withdrawal from power.\n<\/p>\n
\n The only proposal so far considered by both civilian leaders and the military is a transitional constitution developed by the Sudanese Bar Association, which would impose a ban on NCP activity.\n<\/p>\n
\n Bashir, 78, has been in custody in Khartoum since his 2019 ouster.\n<\/p>\n
\n He has been convicted of corruption and has also been on trial over the Islamist-backed 1989 coup which brought him to power.\n<\/p>\n
\n Bashir has been wanted by the International Criminal Court for more than a decade over charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in Sudan's western Darfur region.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sudan's army chief and coup leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan on Sunday warned Islamists and the party of ousted president Omar al-Bashir to stay away from the military. Burhan, whose October 2021 coup derailed a transition to civilian rule, was a senior general under Islamist-backed Bashir. The military toppled the long-time autocrat in 2019 amid enormous […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-108553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n