JEM-Sudan commander’s house attacked

Combatants of the Justice and Equality Movement faction, JEM-Sudan, led by Bakhit Abdelkarim (aka Dabjo), attacked the house of one of their field commanders in El Fasher, capital of North Darfur on Monday.

The field commander, Abdelmajed Bashar, told Radio Dabanga that a group of JEM-Sudan fighters in two Land Cruisers, mounted with Dushka machineguns, surrounded his house in El Fasher’s Sawra district about 6am.  

“They began shooting at the house, which ignited a fire. The entire building, as well as two adjacent houses, burned to the ground. My leg was slightly injured.”

He added that the police came, but did not intervene.

Security arrangements

JEM-Sudan, which broke away from the mainstream movement in 2012, signed the Doha Document for Peace in Darfur (DDPD), in April 2013. In August last year, the long-awaited integration of the JEM-Sudan combatants into the regular forces was launched in El Fasher, as stipulated in the security arrangements protocol of the DDPD.

Bashar explained that the attack against him came against the backdrop of the appointment of 32 JEM-Sudan leaders, all relatives of the movement’s leader, as officers in the Sudanese army.

“A number of field commanders’, including myself, protested against this discriminatory move. We informed the heads of police and security in North Darfur.

“We then went to the house of Dabjo in El Fasher, seized his vehicles and weapons, and handed them to the general army command in the town. Not much later, the authorities demanded from both parties to deliver all their weapons. As the other party did not comply, we filed a complaint against them. The next thing that happened was the attack on my house on Monday morning,” he said.

The field commander appealed through Radio Dabanga to the authorities to immediately intervene, and resolve the problem by granting them their “full rights”.

On 2 March, a group of JEM-Sudan commanders, close to the movement’s leader, detained three of their fellow commanders, and handed them to security officers in El Fasher.