\n Defence lawyers in the trial of Sudan's ousted president Omar al-Bashir over a 1989 coup on Tuesday kept up accusations that the prosecutor general was ineligible for the case.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"The prosecutor general has been politicised, he is exploiting his authority,\" a member of the defence team charged at the eighth hearing of the trial, which opened July 21 and is broadcast on Sudanese television.\n<\/p>\n
\n Tagelsir al-Hebr, the prosecutor general, has read out a string of charges against Bashir and 27 co-defendants including undermining constitutional order and the use of military force to commit a crime.\n<\/p>\n
\n The defence has protested, alleging bias on Hebr's part because he had filed the same charges before taking up the post of prosecutor general.\n<\/p>\n
\n After a nearly two-hour session, the judge adjourned the trial for a week to November 10.\n<\/p>\n
\n Bashir rose to power after toppling the civilian government of prime minister Al-Sadiq al-Mahdi in the Islamist-backed coup.\n<\/p>\n
\n The ousted strongman held on to power for 30 years until the military overthrew him on April 11, 2019, following unprecedented mass youth-led street demonstrations.\n<\/p>\n
\n It is the first time in modern Arab history that the leader of a coup has been put on trial.\n<\/p>\n
\n If convicted, Bashir and his co-accused -- including former top officials -- could face the death penalty.\n<\/p>\n
\n Since his ouster, Bashir has been jailed in Khartoum's high security Kober prison and was found guilty last December of corruption.\n<\/p>\n
\n He has also been indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) over the deadly conflict in the Darfur region of western Sudan that broke out in 2003.\n<\/p>\n
\n Ethnic minority rebels took up arms, accusing Khartoum of political and economic marginalisation of their vast region.\n<\/p>\n
\n The United Nations estimates 300,000 people were killed and 2.5 million displaced in the conflict.\n<\/p>\n
\n Last month, Sudanese officials met with ICC top prosecutor Fatou Bensouda to explore options of trying Bashir over genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Defence lawyers in the trial of Sudan's ousted president Omar al-Bashir over a 1989 coup on Tuesday kept up accusations that the prosecutor general was ineligible for the case. \"The prosecutor general has been politicised, he is exploiting his authority,\" a member of the defence team charged at the eighth hearing of the trial, which […]<\/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-45847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n