Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir is a Sudanese politician who is currently the seventh president of Sudan and head of the National Congress Party. He came to power in 1989 when, as a brigadier in the Sudanese Army, he led a group of officers in a military coup that ousted the democratically elected government of prime minister Sadiq al-Mahdi after it began negotiations with rebels in the south. Since then, he has been elected three times as President in elections that have been under scrutiny for corruption. In March 2009, al-Bashir became the first sitting president to be indicted by the International Criminal Court , for allegedly directing a campaign of mass killing, rape, and pillage against civilians in Darfur.In October 2005, al-Bashir's government negotiated an end to the Second Sudanese civil war, leading to a referendum in the South, resulting in the separation of the south into the separate country of South Sudan. In the Darfur region, he oversaw the war in Darfur that has resulted in death tolls that are about 10,000 according to the Sudanese Government, but most sources suggest between 200,000 and 400,000. During his presidency, there have been several violent struggles between the Janjaweed militia and rebel groups such as the Sudanese Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement in the form of guerrilla warfare in the Darfur region. The civil war has displaced over 2.5 million people out of a total population of 6.2 million in Darfur and has created a crisis in the diplomatic relations between Sudan and Chad. The rebels in Darfur lost the support from Libya after the death of Muammar Gaddafi and the collapse of his regime in 2011.In July 2008, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court , Luis Moreno Ocampo, accused al-Bashir of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in Darfur. The court issued an arrest warrant for al-Bashir on 4 March 2009 on counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, but ruled that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute him for genocide. However, on 12 July 2010, the Court issued a second warrant containing three separate counts of genocide. The new warrant, like the first, was delivered to the Sudanese government, which did not recognize it nor the ICC. The indictments do not allege that Bashir personally took part in such activities; instead, they say that he is "suspected of being criminally responsible, as an indirect co-perpetrator". Some international experts think it is unlikely that Ocampo has enough evidence to prove the allegations. The court's decision is opposed by the African Union, League of Arab States, Non-Aligned Movement, and the governments of Russia and China.
About the Darfur conflict, Sudanese President Confrontation Is Million Times Better http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQuFZaswX0M August 2006
