Sudan's ex-ruling party leader wanted by ICC arrested

Sudan's military has arrested Ahmed Haroun, a senior Islamist official from the era of ousted autocrat Omar al-Bashir who is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC), officials of his party said.

Haroun, leader of Sudan's former ruling National Congress Party (NCP), is wanted by the ICC over alleged war crimes and genocide committed in the Darfur region in the early 2000s. He had lived in hiding for years and denied the charges as politically motivated.

In a podcast interview broadcast on Saturday, Haroun said the NCP and the military, though not politically aligned, were united in the civil war against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Two NCP officials confirmed his arrest, but it is unclear why the military acted against an ally. Neither Sudan's military nor the ICC commented immediately.

Sudan's civil war, running for more than three years, has brought ethnically driven killings, famine and mass displacement; the United Nations calls it the world's largest humanitarian crisis. Fighters of the Islamist movement helped the military's advances against the RSF, movement members say. The NCP is rooted in Sudan's Islamist movement, which dominated in the early years of Bashir's rule in the 1990s.