A Sudanese rebel leader Yasir Arman has returned home despite a 2014 death sentence given in abstentia, saying he will stay even though Sudan’s military junta has asked him to leave.
Arman said that he is in Sudan to help resolve the ongoing standoff over on who should lead Sudan’s transitional government for the next three years.
The Deputy Chairman of a faction of the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement North, Arman flew into Khartoum after more than twenty years of living in Kenya or in Sudan’s restive Blue Nile state and Nuba Mountains area, on the border with South Sudan.
He said the ruling military junta sent him a message Tuesday ordering him to leave, but Arman said he intends to stay, as Sudan is his country.
Arman first took up arms against Sudan’s government in 1986 with the rebels of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, under the late John Garang.
