Darfur rebel leader condemns Nice attack

The Sudan Liberation Movement under leadership of Abdulwahid El Nur (SLM-AW) have offered condolences and expressed their solidarity with the people of France after a suspected Islamist extremist attack yesterday.

A man armed with a knife killed three people in the Notre-Dame basilica in central Nice, the second attack in France this month.

The national anti-terrorist prosecutor has opened an investigation into “killings linked to a terrorist organisation.”

The SLM-AW leadership shared its heartfelt condolences and condemned the attack “by a Salafist extremist that claimed the lives of three peaceful French citizens” in a statement yesterday. “As victims of an ongoing genocide in Darfur, rationalized on the basis of racism and reactionary precepts of Islamist extremism, we shudder at the attacker.”

“The true core of the message of love of Islam, alongside our Kujur Animist and minority Christian comrades, will never comprehend committing murder invoking the name of a universal deity of peace, mercy and tolerance, that binds all Abrahamic faiths,” reads the statement.

“We share in your grief and sense of shock as your adopted brothers and sisters… and we extend our deepest solidarity to all the French nation.” The rebel leader settled in Paris in 2006 after Abuja peace talks produced the Darfur Peace Agreement.

Early this year, El Nur proposed the internal dialogue to the Darfur Displaced and Refugees General Coordination as an alternative to the peace talks. He would reportedly be prepared to return to Sudan to attend the Darfur internal dialogue. If it had not been for the COVID-19 lockdown, he would have arrived in Khartoum months ago, sources say.

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