News Article by AFP posted on June 21, 2000 at 06:32:05: EST (-5 GMT)
Opposition rejects Sudan president's amnesty
CAIRO, June 21 (AFP) - The opposition Sudanese People's
Liberation
Army (SPLA) has rejected an amnesty declared by Sudan's
President Omar
al-Beshir, SPLA spokesman Yasser Arman told AFP
Wednesday by telephone from
Asmara.
"We reject General Beshir's decision, because we believe it is
he who
needs to be pardoned and because we want a true democracy and
complete
peace," Arman said.
The SPLA spokesman said Beshir needed an amnesty himself because
of the
June 30, 1989, coup that brought him to power.
Arman accused Beshir of "arresting, torturing and killing
thousands of
Sudanese citizens and causing the flight and
displacement of hundreds of
thousands of Sudanese."
Beshir should be "brought before an international court of
justice like
the Serbian leaders of the former Yugoslavia for the
crimes he has committed"
and for "leading thousands of young
Sudanese to the holocaust" of civil war.
Arman also called for the prosecution of "all members of the
regime or
everyone who has participated at undermining the political
and economic life
of the country and who practiced corruption."
Beshir earlier issued an unconditional amnesty to all opponents
of his
regime both in the country and abroad and called for the
release of all
political prisoners and detainees, according to the
official SUNA news
agency.
Sudan has been engaged in a civil war between the Arab and
Muslim north
and the Christian and animist south since 1983.