SUDAN'S government has doubled its bounty for the country's most wanted Darfur rebel leader, whose troops staged a daring raid on the outskirts of Khartoum last week.
State TV yesterday said president Omar al-Bashir's government increased a reward for Khalil Ibrahim, who heads Darfur's Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), to 500 million Sudanese pounds, or £123 million – almost ten times the amount the United Stat
es has offered for Osama bin Laden.
According to the TV report, the bounty will go to anyone who contributes to the arrest of Ibrahim, who has been on the run since Saturday's attack on Khartoum.
It also said the Sudanese security intercepted a message exchange between Ibrahim and Chadian authorities in which he allegedly asks Chad to send him a getaway helicopter.
The report added that Ibrahim appeared to be hiding out in north-east Darfur.
Ibrahim's followers reached the outskirts of Khartoum on Saturday, after racing across the vast arid terrain of central Sudan with little obstruction – even though the military spotted and unsuccessfully pursued them – to make it to the capital's doorstep.
The attack, which Khartoum later said it had repelled, shocked the government, which is now conducting a manhunt for Ibrahim and cracking down on other opposition figures.
An Islamist opposition politician, Hassan al-Turabi, accused of links to JEM, was detained and questioned on Monday, before being released.
According to witnesses cited by the New York-based Human Rights Watch, at least 100 people have been arrested since the attack, as security forces comb the capital for suspected rebels.
"Given Khartoum's record of abuse, there is grave cause for concern about the fate of those detained," Georgette Gagnon, the group's Africa director, said in a statement.
The organisation also estimated that 60 civilians had been killed in the clashes.
The TV report gave no further details about the bounty. Sudan has benefited from the worldwide surge in oil prices, but it is unclear from where the authorities will allocate funds for the reward.
On Sunday, the state TV for the first time broadcast a photo of the JEM leader, asking citizens to call a special hotline if they saw Ibrahim.
In a telephone interview with him on Monday, Ibrahim vowed to keep up his offensive against the Sudanese government, saying he can exhaust the military by fighting it all across Africa's largest nation.
Ibrahim said he was speaking by phone while on the run in the capital's twin city of Omdurman, and that he was allegedly "not safe" but still with his troops.
The full article contains 432 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
