Awad Awad Mohammed bin Auf, 62, the military commander who announced the arrest of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and the armed forces' attempt to uproot the regime.
Ben Auf is the defense minister and vice president since February 23 when Bashir appointed him as his deputy while maintaining his military post amidst demonstrations in Sudanese cities since December 19, 2018.
Ben Auf has held many military and civilian posts, but his name has also been included in US administration decisions to impose economic sanctions on a number of Sudanese parties for their role in the massacres of Darfur. On May 29, 2007, the US State Department
issued a statement announcing economic sanctions against Ben Awaf, then director of military and security intelligence, Sudanese Minister of State for Humanitarian Affairs Ahmed Haroun, and Khalil Ibrahim, leader of Sudan's rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), as well as 31 companies that contributed to worsening the situation. Humanitarian situation in Darfur.
"The individuals [listed in the statement] are heavily involved in Darfur and have been linked to violence, atrocities and human rights abuses in the region," the State Department said in a statement.
The
crisis in Darfur began in 2003 with a rebellion within the region against the central Sudanese government under the pretext of persecution of the Sudanese authorities in the region.
In return, the government supported armed militias known as Janjaweed to fight the Darfur rebels. These militias and the Sudanese government have faced international accusations of genocide and obstructed access to relief supplies to the region, killing 200,000 people and displacing 2.5 million of their livelihoods.
Rights organizations accused Ben Awaf of being responsible between 2003 and 2007 for coordination between the Sudanese government authorities and the Janjawid, accused of committing genocide in Darfur.
Three years later, Ben Awaf was transferred to retirement in June 2010, then deputy chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to serve as ambassador to the Sudanese Foreign Ministry.
The removal of Ben Ouf came a
day before ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo attended a UN Security Council meeting to ask council members to take steps against the Sudanese government's refusal to extradite war crimes suspects.
During that meeting, Ocampo said that "genocide and crimes against humanity continue unabated in Darfur, because the Sudanese president knows to challenge the authority of the Security Council."
The International Criminal Court issued several decisions, between 2008 and 2009, the arrest of Bashir and a number of Sudanese officials on the backdrop of the genocide in Darfur.
The
accusations of participation in the massacres of Darfur play a role in determining a successor to Bashir , according to statements by a Sudanese military source to «Egypt» on Sunday that there was a push towards a candidate who is not accused or at risk of being indicted by the International Criminal Court because of his involvement In the war crimes and genocide committed by Bashir in Darfur.
According to the previous report, which was published by «Mada Egypt» a few days ago, was among the candidates to succeed Bashir, the current head of the Sudanese intelligence Salah Qosh because of not being named on the list of «international criminal», but at the top of the security and intelligence at the moment, By human rights organizations to organize military militias and planning bloody confrontations with the protests in Darfur, according to a source in the «International Criminal» refused to be named. A UN panel of experts put Gosh on a
list of 17 people responsible for war crimes committed in Darfur.
The Sudanese military source said that former army chief of staff Imad al-Din al-Awadhi was a candidate to succeed al-Bashir because he was not involved in the Darfur genocide. Al-Awadhi
was appointed army chief of staff in 2016 and served in his post until he was
told by Bashir in 2018 in a cabinet reshuffle that also saw Qosh regain his post as head of the security and intelligence services.
During the years of Ben Awf departure from the military establishment, he held several positions in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, including the Director of Crisis Management, the Consul General of Sudan in Cairo and the head of the diplomatic mission in the Sultanate of Oman, before the presidential decision to return to the armed forces again in 2015, , After the re-election of Bashir that year.
He defended the continued participation of Sudan in the regional alliance, which began the process of "military storm" against the Houthis in Yemen in 2015,
describing Sudan's participation in this military operation as a "moral and religious duty," adding that Sudan "will defend until the last man from the two holy mosques Saudi". The Sudanese government has about 6,000 troops in Yemen. However,
press reports revealed that tens of thousands of Sudanese fighters, mostly from the Darfur region, which is suffering from worsening humanitarian and economic conditions, some of them children, are being held in exchange for money paid by Saudi Arabia. The United Nations considered the
war on Yemen the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, after it caused the suffering of 12 million hungry, and killed about 85 thousand children, according to relief groups.
On the other hand, the beginnings of the Sudanese uprising, which reached the station to overthrow Bashir on Thursday morning, last December, when most of the deputies to the Sudanese parliament request to amend the Constitution makes the presidential periods open rather than two consecutive periods, and if the Constitution was amended, Nominate again in 2020, after the end of his second term.
The protests began on Wednesday (December 19th) in the state of the Nile River, 200 km from the Sudanese capital, but soon spread to other cities, including the cities of Port Sudan, Wad Madani, Eastern Sudan. While most of the calls for protest through posts on the social networking sites under the
label of «Sudan's cities» to rise ».
Then protests
escalated on Wednesday, December 26, as thousands of demonstrators in the Sudanese capital Khartoum tried to head towards the presidential palace. Security forces fired live bullets at demonstrators to prevent them from reaching the palace, Sudanese medical sources told AFP. This coincided with Bashir accusing foreign countries of conspiring against his rule by using what he called "traitors and mercenaries" and using the shortage of goods to "sabotage the Sudan."
