Sudan: Deadly sit-in dispersal not by generals

CAIRO — Sudanese prosecutors on Saturday said the country’s ruling generals did not order the deadly breakup of a protest camp last month, instead blaming the dispersal on paramilitary forces who exceeded their orders.

Sudanese protest leaders disputed the prosecutors’ conclusion, saying the decision to raze the sit-in was made at the highest levels of the military council.

On June 3, Sudan’s security forces violently swept away a protest camp located in front of the military headquarters in the capital, Khartoum. This marked an alarming turn in the standoff between the military and the protesters, who had been holding a sit-in to pressure the military council to hand power over to civilians. Sudan’s army ousted autocratic President Omar al-Bashir in April amid nationwide protests against his nearly 30-year rule.

According to the protesters, at least 128 people have been killed and hundreds wounded during the sit-in dispersal and the subsequent crackdown. However, military-backed health authorities say only 61 have died, including three security force members. In the days following the dispersal, protest organizers said more than 40 bodies of people slain by security forces were pulled from the Nile River.

In a televised press conference in Khartoum, prosecutor Fathel-Rahman Said announced that security forces were told only to clear a lawless area close to the protest camp, not the sit-in itself.

He said troops from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces moved to disperse the protest camp on their own initiative.