Brother of al-Bashir not in detention, says military council

Sudan’s ruling military council said on Tuesday that a brother of ousted president Omar al-Bashir who it previously announced had been detained was actually not in custody.

On April 17, the military council had announced that it had detained two of Bashir’s five brothers - Abdallah Hassan al-Bashir and Al-Abbas Hassan al-Bashir.

“This statement was not accurate,” military council spokesman Lieutenant General Shamseddine Kabbashi told reporters early on Tuesday.

He said on April 17 Abdallah had been arrested, and the next day Abbas was seen in an area bordering with a neighboring country.

“Sudanese authorities have been in contact with this country but it has refused to hand him over to us,” he said without naming the country.

“Then news came that he is in Turkey,” Kabbashi said without specifying whether he was referring to recent media reports of Abbas being in Turkey.

Omar al-Bashir himself is being held in Khartoum’s Kober prison, according to the council.

On Monday, Sudan’s prosecutor general’s office said al-Bashir had been charged over the killings of protesters during anti-regime protests that led to his ouster on April 11.

The charges form part of an investigation into the death of a medic killed during a protest in the capital’s eastern district of Burri, the prosecutor general’s office said in a statement.

Ninety people were killed in protest-related violence after demonstrations initially erupted in December, a doctors’ committee linked to the protest movement said last month.

The official death toll is 65.

On Monday, five protesters and an army major were shot dead in Khartoum, according to the committee, just hours after protest leaders and the ruling generals reached a breakthrough agreement on transitional authorities to run the country.

The army rulers who took power after Omar al-Bashir’s ouster and protest leaders are engaged in negotiations over handing of power from the generals to a civilian administration.