Defiant as ever

Omar Al Bashir, 65, on March 4 became the first serving head of state to face an international warrant for war crimes.

Al Bashir has rejected the International Criminal Court's legitimacy and refused to abide by the warrant for his arrest; he says he intends to run as a candidate in elections later this year.

Al Bashir was born the son of a farmer who tilled the fertile soil of the Nile Valley north of Khartoum on New Year's Day, 1944, when his country was still a part of the Kingdom of Egypt and Sudan.

On his 12th birthday, the nation he would go on to lead became an independent state.

At 16, Al Bashir joined the army, studying at military colleges in Cairo and Khartoum.

He was promoted quickly, fighting with Egypt against Israel in 1973, and in southern Sudan against his own rebellious countrymen.

On June 30, 1989 he led fellow officers in a mutiny against prime minister Sadiq Al Mahdi. Al Bashir said in a televised communique that the coup was “to save the country from rotten political parties''.

The coup was also aimed at preventing the signing of a peace treaty with John Garang's Sudan People's Liberation Movement. Al Bashir opposed the plan.

Al Bashir proclaimed himself chairman of a 15-member Revolutionary Command Council.

He signed a “constitutional decree'' dismissing the government and other state bodies.

Pragmatic at times, he has liberalised Sudan's economy to take advantage of oil production and has established strong trade ties with countries such as China and Russia.

Al Bashir has said the ICC has little power to enforce an arrest warrant.

But suspects can be arrested in any country that is a signatory to the Rome Statute, the treaty which established the court in 1998.