By Joseph Oduha
April 19, 2019
Salah Gosh has to answer for his crimes in a court of law.
Such is the plea of Amnesty International, which has a lot of facts to back it up. Salah Gosh – more properly Salah Abdallah – is reputed to have been instrumental in the killings of some 400,000 peoples perpetrated by the Sudanese government in the years 2003 – 20016 in the Darfur region.
A major general in the Sudanese army and a “national security advisor”, Gosh served stints as the director of Sudan’s National Intelligence and Security Service. During his last tenure at the NISS’ helm (from February 11, 2018 – to April 13, 2019), Gosh presided over the killing and torturing of a large number of the protesters calling – ultimately successfully – for the ousting of Omar al-Bashir, the long-serving and dictatorial president of South Sudan.
“It is crucial that Sudan’s new authorities investigate Salah Gosh’s role in the killings of scores of Sudanese protesters over the past four months as well as allegations of torture, arbitrary detention and other human rights violations under his supervision of Sudan’s NISS,” stated Sarah Jackson, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for East Africa, the Horn and the Great Lakes.
Gosh’s resignation on April 13th should not exempt him from being called to bear responsibility for the gross abuses of human rights committed during his watch, added Amnesty: “Resignation from power must not mean an escape from accountability for serious human rights violations.”
Other calls issued by Amnesty: “The new authorities in Sudan must address past human rights violations and undertake desperately
needed reforms to ensure that there can be no repeat of the heinous crimes under international law the country has witnessed over the past three decades. “Sudan’s new authorities must also urgently declare the whereabouts of former President Omar al-Bashir and immediately hand him over to the International Criminal Court to ensure justice can be served for the atrocities committed during his three decades in power,” it says.
The International Criminal Court has charged al-Bashir with five counts of crimes against humanity and two of war-related transgressions.
