Rights groups call for Sudan's Omar al-Bashir ICC extradition

The 75-year-old's whereabouts have been unknown since a military takeover on 11 April, when the country's new rulers said he was being held "in a secure place".

Following the dramatic end to al-Bashir's three-decade rule, he was moved late on Tuesday "to Kobar prison in Khartoum".

Witnesses said there was a heavy deployment of soldiers and members of a paramilitary group outside the prison.

Bashir faces ICC arrest warrants over accusations of genocide and crimes against humanity in Darfur region during an insurgency that started in 2003 and led to the death of an estimated 300,000 people. The allegation were, however, denied by the long-standing dictator al-Bashir.

The former president has defied the ICC by visiting several ICC member states. Diplomatic rows broke out when he went to South Africa in 2015 and Jordan in 2017 and both declined to arrest and extradiate him to the ICC in the Netherlands.

London-based human rights organisation Amnesty International called for Bashir to be immediately extradited to ICC.

"His case must not be hurriedly tried in Sudan's notoriously dysfunctional legal system. Justice must be served," said Joan Nyanyuki, Amnesty director for East Africa, the Horn and Great Lakes.

"Sudan must take urgent steps to rebuild its justice sector but, in the meantime, the only way victims of his alleged crimes will see progress towards justice are if Bashir faces a fair trial at the ICC," Nyanyuki said in an Amnesty statement.

The head of the TMC's political committee, Omar Zain al-Abideen, said on Friday that Sudan would not extradite Bashir for trial, suggesting he could be tried in the country instead.

Uganda will consider offering asylum to Bashir despite his decade-old indictment by the ICC.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has previously criticised the ICC, calling it a tool of Western justice against Africans.