Will the Sudanese government hand over Ahmed Haroun, wanted by the International Criminal Court, after his arrest?

The Sudanese authorities arrested Ahmed Haroun, head of the ruling National Congress Party during the era of deposed President Omar al-Bashir, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court.

As of the moment of writing this report, there has been no official comment from the Sudanese government regarding the motives for the arrest, but a leader in the National Congress Party confirmed to the BBC that the incident had occurred, without revealing further details about it.

Ibrahim Al-Siddiq, a leader in the National Congress Party, spoke about what he described as the details of the arrest incident.

He said in a post on his Facebook account that the authorities arrested Haroun in the city of Kassala, eastern Sudan, when he was preparing to leave for the city of Atbara in the north of the country. He said that the party had prior information about the authorities seeking to take this step, against the backdrop of what the friend described as “(Haroun)’s expression of his party’s positions during a media dialogue.”

Al-Siddiq suggested that the reasons for the arrest were linked to what he said was “the state leadership’s attempt to respond to external pressures and conditions,” adding that this step comes to “satisfy international and regional parties,” without explicitly mentioning it.

In April 2007, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against Haroun, containing 42 charges related to war crimes and crimes against humanity, allegedly committed in the Darfur region during his holding a number of government positions during the era of the deposed Sudanese president. The court accuses Al-Bashir himself and a number of his aides of committing similar crimes.

In 2009, the court issued arrest warrants against Al-Bashir, Haroun, and former Defense Minister Abdel-Rahim Mohamed Hussein, and demanded the Sudanese government to extradite them.

Haroun, who held security and political positions during the Bashir era, has not yet appeared before the court, despite local demands for his extradition.

The United States had offered a financial reward of five million dollars to anyone who provides information leading to the arrest of Haroun, who has remained hidden from view since the outbreak of war between the army and the Rapid Support Forces in April 2023.

But he recently appeared on a podcast, during which he spoke about a number of political and security issues in Sudan.

Before the outbreak of the current war in Sudan, Haroun and a number of leaders of the Bashir regime were subject to investigations on charges related to the coup against the regime, after the fall of the Bashir regime and the formation of the transitional government in the country.

After news of the arrest circulated, Haroun’s defense team called on the Sudanese authorities to immediately reveal his place of detention and the legal basis for his arrest, and to review the measures taken against him.

In a statement, the Commission stressed the need to subject any measures taken against him to independent judicial oversight, and to guarantee his right to “defense and a fair trial,” considering that “handling any accusations or judicial cases must take place through the competent judicial institutions, away from political tensions.”

The statement said: “The Defense Authority confirms that its defense of its client is not aimed at obstructing justice or diminishing the jurisdiction of judicial institutions, but rather consists in ensuring that all procedures are subject to the law, and that the presumption of innocence, the right to defense, and the principle of the rule of law are respected, without discrimination or selectivity.” She said, "Justice is not achieved except by the law, and is only achieved by equality before it, and freedom of expression or difference of opinion should not be a gateway to compromising the rights and freedoms guaranteed by law."

On the other hand, lawyer Moez Hadra, a member of the indictment panel in the coup against the regime case, in which Haroun and others are accused, says that Haroun may not be released on regular bail, and that “his natural place is prison,” noting that criminal reports have been filed against him, in some of which the penalty, if convicted, reaches death under Sudanese criminal law.

Hazrat said, during statements to the BBC, that Haroun was released from prison due to the war and unfavorable conditions, as he put it, adding: “Now the situation has calmed down and the prisons have been reopened, and it was natural for him to be returned to prison again, and this did not happen... His public appearance confirms that he is cooperating with the army, as he said, and therefore there is some kind of coordination between the government and the National Congress Party.”

Anti-war political groups, including the "Samoud" coalition led by Prime Minister Abdullah Hamdok, accuse Bashir's party and the Islamists of causing the war, seeking to return to power again, after the fall of Bashir's government following a popular revolution that broke out in 2019.

Islamic leaders have always rejected these accusations.

He calls on the Sudanese authorities to open additional criminal investigations against Ahmed Haroun and the rest of the Islamic leaders, against the backdrop of their responsibility, according to him, for the war and the resulting deaths, displacement, destruction and devastation.

He went on to say: "A report must be opened against him on charges of provoking war against the state, because he is one of the people who stood behind the outbreak of war between the army and the Rapid Support Forces, in order for them to return to power after they were uprooted by the revolution."

The issue of extradition to the International Criminal Court has long been a subject of discussion and controversy since the fall of the Bashir regime and the formation of the transitional government in Sudan, which came as a result of arduous negotiations between protest leaders and the army.

Despite Sudan signing a memorandum of understanding with the International Criminal Court - since it did not sign the Rome Charter establishing the court - and the repeated visits of a number of the court’s prosecutors to Sudan, and the Sudanese government’s declaration of its desire to cooperate with it, none of the wanted persons were handed over to it.

Al-Bashir and his wanted leaders, including Haroun, were in prison before the war broke out between the army and the Rapid Support Forces, but they disappeared from sight as the security conditions deteriorated.

The Sudanese Minister of the Interior, Babiker Abu Samra, had previously confirmed in a previous interview with the BBC that the security and police services are keeping Al-Bashir and his ministers in a “known location.”

Haroun had said in the “podcast” in which he recently appeared and was subsequently arrested, that his release from prison came in agreement with the judicial authority, after the security and humanitarian conditions inside it deteriorated, and the members of the Rapid Support Forces came close to controlling it.

He added that the leaders of the former regime who left the prison went to a safe area, and then dispersed after writing personal pledges to return to the prison, whenever security conditions became appropriate.

Haroun appeared on limited occasions in a number of regions, including the city of Kassala in the east of the country and the city of Atbara in the north.

Meanwhile, Al-Bashir is still receiving health care at Alia Military Hospital in Omdurman, after he was transferred there from the city of Meroe in northern Sudan, where he was staying following the deterioration of his health condition.

Government sources also revealed to the BBC that the security authorities allowed former Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Muhammad Hussein to go to his hometown in the Karma al-Balad region in the northern state, noting that Hussein currently resides there, and carries out his life and social duties among the residents.

The authorities also allowed Bashir's former deputy, Bakri Hassan Saleh, to leave the country and go to Türkiye to receive treatment, following the deterioration of his health condition.

Moez Hadra, a member of the indictment in the case of the deposed president's regime, describes Haroun's arrest as a "farcical farce," considering it an attempt by the authorities to absorb the anger of the interior and abroad, after Haroun's public appearance and his talk about the participation of the leaders of the National Congress Party in the war and their provision of aid to the army, as he put it.

He called on the Sudanese government to hand over Haroun and the rest of the defendants to the International Criminal Court for trial, saying: “The government is obligated to hand him over to the court as long as he remains in its custody, especially since the case in which Haroun is accused has been referred by the UN Security Council to the International Criminal Court... But I do not believe that the government will hand him over to the court because of its complex internal calculations.”

While there was no immediate comment from the Sudanese government regarding the recent calls to extradite the wanted persons, the Sudanese Minister of Justice, Abdullah Darf, said during press statements published last July that Sudan cannot extradite the wanted persons because it has not signed the Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court.

His statements came after he criticized the International Criminal Court, considering that it had not done enough to convict military commanders affiliated with the Rapid Support Forces, whom he said were involved in war crimes and genocide in Darfur, during the currently ongoing war between these forces and the Sudanese army.