KHARTOUM - Sudan's public prosecutor has
begun investigating ousted President Omar al-Bashir on charges
of money laundering and possession of large sums of foreign
currency without legal grounds, a judicial source said on
Saturday.
The source said that military intelligence had searched
Bashir's home and found suitcases loaded with more than $351,000
and six million euros, as well as five million Sudanese pounds.
"The chief public prosecutor... ordered the (former)
president detained and quickly questioned in preparation to put
him on trial," a judicial source told Reuters.
"The public prosecution will question the former president
in Kobar prison," the source added.
Relatives could not be immediately reached on Saturday for
comment about the investigation.
Bashir, who is also being sought by the International
Criminal Court over allegations of genocide in the country's
western Darfur region, was ousted on April 11 by the military
following months of protests against his rule and had been held
at a presidential residence.
Bashir's family said this week that the former president had
been moved to the high-security Kobar prison in Khartoum.
As president Bashir often played up his humble beginnings as
the child of a poor farming family in Hosh Bannaga, a small
village consisting mainly of mud houses on the eastern bank of
the Nile some 150 km (93 miles) north of Khartoum.
The Sudanese Professionals' Association, leading the
protests, has called for holding Bashir and members of his
administration to account, a purge of corruption and cronyism
and easing an economic crisis that worsened during Bashir's last
years in power.
On Wednesday, Sudan's transitional military council ordered
the central bank to review financial transfers since April 1 and
to seize "suspect" funds, according to state news agency SUNA.
The council also ordered the "suspension of the transfer of
ownership of any shares until further notice and for any large
or suspect transfers of shares or companies to be reported" to
authorities.