President Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir, who ruled Sudan for 30 years, was overthrown on Thursday and arrested in a coup by the armed forces, news agency Reuters reports.
Over the past weeks, there have been rallies and demonstrations in Sudan: the protesters called on to depose al-Bashir. On Tuesday, 11 persons were killed in anti-government protests.
In December 2018, the Sudanese leader made an official visit to Belarus. Then, Alyaksandr Lukashenka said that Belarusian companies would mine gold in Sudan together with local specialists.
According to Belarusian Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Minister Andrey Khudyk, the Sudanese side promised to allocate a would-be gold-mining site in the vicinity of the Nile to Belarus ‘in the near future’.
In late January, the Ukrainian Security service (SBU) gave to the world the names of 149 militants, citizens of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and other countries who, according to SBU information, took part in suppressing protests against its president, a close Russian ally.
In response, Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that private Russian companies were training the army in Sudan, confirming for the first time their presence in the country.
Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir came to power in 1989 when he was leading a group of officers in a military coup that ousted the democratically elected government. In Macrh 2009, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for al-Bashir on counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur.
