African media is reporting that Global Muslim Brotherhood figure Issam El-Bashir has addressed the annual Ramadan banquet sponsored by the Presidency of Sudan. According to the AllAfrica.com report, Sudanese President Field Marshal Omer Al-Bashir (no known relation) was in attendance:
June 30, 2015 The Presidency of the Republic held Tuesday its annual Ramadan Banquet in Friendship Hall in Khartoum. President of the Republic, Field Marshal Omer Al-Bashir, his two deputies, Lt. Gen. Bakri Hassan Salih and Hassabo Mohammed Abdul-Rahman, Assistants of the President, Ministers , Speaker of the National Assembly, diplomats and Muslim and Christian scholars attended the banquet ceremony.
Chairman of Islamic Fiqh Council, Dr Esam Ahmed Al-Bashir addressed the ceremony and called unity of Islamic nation , giving up differences and regionalism , announcing in this regard a launch of initiative on major renaissance for Islamic nation which is based on worshiping and faith.”
Sudanese national Issam El-Bashir (aka Essam El-Bashir) has held numerous positions associated with the global Muslim Brotherhood including as a former director of the UK charity Islamic Relief, a member of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, and as a former Minister of Religious Affairs in the Sudanese political party of Hassan Al-Turabi, formerly closely tied to the Brotherhood. We last reported on Dr. El-Bashir in March 2014 when he attended a global conference sponsored by the Saudi Muslim World League.
GMBDW reporting on the Muslim Brotherhood in Sudan has recently included:
- The GMBDW reported in January on an announcement by the Muslim Brotherhood that it would not participate in the country’s April general elections.
- In May 2013, we reported that the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood had taken the highly unusual step, for the Global Muslim Brotherhood at least, of declaring “jihad” on rebel Muslim groups in the country, a declaration placing the Sudanese Brotherhood in the same category as the so-called jihadi/takfiri groups.
- In January 2011, the Muslim Brotherhood of Sudan called on Arab and Islamic nations to “save Sudan from the US-Israeli schemes to divide it.”
- In February 2010, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood reported that the Muslim Brotherhood in Sudan was backing the current President Omar Al-Bashir, who has been charged with war crimes by the international criminal court over the Darfur conflict and the first sitting head of state issued with an arrest warrant.