JEM strongly refutes faction’s account of Chad-Sudan border clash

A senior member of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) has strongly refuted accounts by the JEM-Bashar breakaway faction of the clash on the Chad-Sudan border on Sunday left three faction leaders dead.In an interview with Radio Dabanga on Wednesday, the brother of the late Mohamed Bashar, leader of JEM-Bashar, said his brother was killed intentionally along with a third brother and at least eight others. He asserted that JEM militiamen attacked the unarmed group on Chadian soil and then buried some of the bodies across the Sudanese border in North Darfur.Abdullahi Osman El Tom, head of the JEM Bureau for Strategic Planning says that in fact, JEM-Bashar’s forces crossed the border from Chad with a force of between 130 and 200 fighters, four ammunition and logistical trucks, and 23 Land Cruisers. These were mounted with 221mm, 23mm, and 12.5mm artillery guns, Katyusha and SPG-9 rocket launchers. The personnel were armed with rifles and RPG-7 hand-held rocket launchers.“Baffling as it was, the car driven by the slain Mohamed Bashar was also carrying 50 shackles and it is a riddle to us what he was intending to do with them. Perhaps the shackles were reserved for senior JEM captives along the way,” he said.El Tom asserts the clash took place in Bamina, North Darfur, away from the Sudan-Chad border, which is heavily guarded by the combined forces of the two countries. He added that in that area, border demarcations are very clear as the two countries are divided by the Tina valley.Following a “brief exchange of heavy fire, Bashar’s group lost control and went into disarray,” he says. “Most escaped, but some were surrounded, injured or killed, including Mohamed Bashar, Arko Suleiman and others.”The JEM force lost two soldiers and a further eight were injured. El Tom says “it was realised soon after the battle that Mohamed Bashar was among the casualties”.The JEM-Bashar faction was formed in September last year when a splinter faction of the JEM announced its separation from Darfur’s largest rebel group, accusing the movement of becoming a biased organisation, expressing favouritism to some particular ideas and accused the group of being no longer transparent.On 6 April, Mohamed Bashar, leader of what became known as the JEM-Bashar, signed the internationally brokered DDPD with the Sudanese government in Qatar.Map: Chad-Sudan borderRelated: ‘Deliberate assassination’: Surviving Bashar brother visits burial site in North Darfur (15 May 2013)