Dubai: In an interview with the BBC, Sudanese President Omar Al Bashir said he plans to step down from power when his current mandate ends in 2020.
Al Bashir was re-elected last year, nabbing a whopping 94 per cent of the vote.
The Sudanese president, who has been in power since 1989, when he took over power in a coup, said he was “exhausted”.
Observers remain sceptical over Al Bashir’s promise because he has failed to fulfil previous pledges to step down.
Bashir was born in 1944 in the Nile Valley north of Khartoum. The son of a small farmer, he graduated from Sudan’s military academy in 1966 and was a career army officer who rose to the rank of general.
He served at least one tour of combat duty in the south against the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA). In June 1989 he overthrew the democratically elected civilian government of former Prime Minister Sadek Al Mahdi.
In October 1993, he dissolved the military junta which brought him to power and appointed himself civilian president in a move designed to establish Islamic government in Africa’s largest country as stable and civilian-based.
During the first decade of his rule, Bashir alienated many neighbours and Western governments with his increasingly extremist interpretation of Islam and alleged support for Islamic radicals abroad.
Saudi-born Al Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden was based in Sudan in the 1990s before being expelled. Relations between Al Bashir’s government and the United States hit a nadir in 1998, when Washington bombed a pharmaceuticals plant near Khartoum it said was making ingredients for chemical weapons. Sudan denied the charge.
Al Bashir was one of the few Arab leaders that managed to emerge from the so-called Arab Spring protests unscathed.
-with inputs from Reuters
