Sudan

Bashir leads fellow officers in a mutiny against Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi. The coup is also aimed at preventing the signing of a peace treaty with John Garang’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM). Bashir opposed the plan, which would have allowed secular law, instead of Sharia, in the south. He says in a televised communique that the coup is:

to save the country from rotten political parties.

He claims himself chairman of Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) and signs a constitutional decree dismissing the government and other state bodies. Further decrees dissolve political parties and trade unions, and impose a state of emergency and a ban on demonstrations against the “revolution of national salvation”