text: He entered the House of Commons as a Conservative on 22 August 1853, as MP for Stamford in Lincolnshire. He retained this seat until he succeeded to his father's peerages in 1868 and it was not contested during his time as its representative. In his election address he opposed secular education and "ultramontane" interference with the Church of England which was "at variance with the fundamental principles of our constitution". He would oppose "any such tampering with our representative system as shall disturb the reciprocal powers on which the stability of our constitution rests". In 1867, after his brother Eustace complained of being addressed by constituents in a hotel, Cecil responded: "A hotel infested by influential constituents is worse than one infested by bugs. It's a pity you can't carry around a powder insecticide to get rid of vermin of that kind".


title: Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

text: In December 1856 Cecil began publishing articles for the "Saturday Review", to which he contributed anonymously for the next nine years. From 1861 to 1864 he published 422 articles in it; in total the weekly published 608 of his articles. The "Quarterly Review" was the foremost intellectual journal of the age and of the twenty-six issues published between spring 1860 and summer 1866, Cecil had anonymous articles in all but three of them. He also wrote lead articles for the Tory daily newspaper the "Standard". In 1859 Cecil was a founding co-editor of "Bentley's Quarterly Review", with John Douglas Cook and Rev. William Scott; but it closed after four issues.


text: Salisbury criticised the foreign policy of Lord John Russell, claiming he was "always being willing to sacrifice anything for peace... colleagues, principles, pledges... a portentous mixture of bounce and baseness... dauntless to the weak, timid and cringing to the strong". The lessons to be learnt from Russell's foreign policy, Salisbury believed, were that he should not listen to the opposition or the press otherwise "we are to be governed… by a set of weathercocks, delicately poised, warranted to indicate with unnerving accuracy every variation in public feeling". Secondly: "No one dreams of conducting national affairs with the principles which are prescribed to individuals. The meek and poor-spirited among nations are not to be blessed, and the common sense of Christendom has always prescribed for national policy principles diametrically opposed to those that are laid down in the Sermon on the Mount". Thirdly: "The assemblies that meet in Westminster have no jurisdiction over the affairs of other nations. Neither they nor the Executive, except in plain defiance of international law, can interfere [in the internal affairs of other countries]... It is not a dignified position for a Great Power to occupy, to be pointed out as the busybody of Christendom". Finally, Britain should not threaten other countries unless prepared to back this up by force: "A willingness to fight is the "point d'appui" of diplomacy, just as much as a readiness to go to court is the starting point of a lawyer's letter. It is merely courting dishonour, and inviting humiliation for the men of peace to use the habitual language of the men of war".


text: In 1866 Lord Robert, now Viscount Cranborne after the death of his older brother, entered the third government of Lord Derby as Secretary of State for India. When in 1867 John Stuart Mill proposed a type of proportional representation, Cranborne argued that: "It was not of our atmosphere—it was not in accordance with our habits; it did not belong to us. They all knew that it could not pass. Whether that was creditable to the House or not was a question into which he would not inquire; but every Member of the House the moment he saw the scheme upon the Paper saw that it belonged to the class of impracticable things".


text: On 2 August when the Commons debated the Orissa famine in India, Cranborne spoke out against experts, political economy, and the government of Bengal. Utilising the Blue Books, Cranborne criticised officials for "walking in a dream… in superb unconsciousness, believing that what had been must be, and that as long as they did nothing absolutely wrong, and they did not displease their immediate superiors, they had fulfilled all the duties of their station". These officials worshipped political economy "as a sort of 'fetish'... [they] seemed to have forgotten utterly that human life was short, and that man did not subsist without food beyond a few days". Three-quarters of a million people had died because officials had chosen "to run the risk of losing the lives than to run the risk of wasting the money". Cranborne's speech was received with "an enthusiastic, hearty cheer from both sides of the House" and Mill crossed the floor of the Commons to congratulate him on it. The famine left Cranborne with a lifelong suspicion of experts and in the photograph albums at his home covering the years 1866–67 there are two images of skeletal Indian children amongst the family pictures.


text: When parliamentary reform came to prominence again in the mid-1860s, Cranborne worked hard to master electoral statistics until he became an expert. When the Liberal Reform Bill was being debated in 1866, Cranborne studied the census returns to see how each clause in the Bill would affect the electoral prospects in each seat. Cranborne did not expect Disraeli's conversion to reform, however. When the Cabinet met on 16 February 1867, Disraeli voiced his support for some extension of the suffrage, providing statistics amassed by Robert Dudley Baxter, showing that 330,000 people would be given the vote and all except 60,000 would be granted extra votes. Cranborne studied Baxter's statistics and on 21 February he met Lord Carnarvon, who wrote in his diary: "He is firmly convinced now that Disraeli has played us false, that he is attempting to hustle us into his measure, that Lord Derby is in his hands and that the present form which the question has now assumed has been long planned by him". They agreed to "a sort of offensive and defensive alliance on this question in the Cabinet" to "prevent the Cabinet adopting any very fatal course". Disraeli had "separate and confidential conversations...carried on with each member of the Cabinet from whom he anticipated opposition [which] had divided them and lulled their suspicions". That same night Cranborne spent three hours studying Baxter's statistics and wrote to Carnarvon the day after that although Baxter was right overall in claiming that 30% of £10 ratepayers who qualified for the vote would not register, it would be untrue in relation to the smaller boroughs where the register is kept up to date. Cranborne also wrote to Derby arguing that he should adopt 10 shillings rather than Disraeli's 20 shillings for the qualification of the payers of direct taxation: "Now above 10 shillings you won't get in the large mass of the £20 householders. At 20 shillings I fear you won't get more than 150,000 double voters, instead of the 270,000 on which we counted. And I fear this will tell horribly on the small and middle-sized boroughs".


text: On 23 February Cranborne protested in Cabinet and the next day analysed Baxter's figures using census returns and other statistics to determine how Disraeli's planned extension of the franchise would affect subsequent elections. Cranborne found that Baxter had not taken into account the different types of boroughs in the totals of new voters. In small boroughs under 20,000 the "fancy franchises" for direct taxpayers and dual voters would be less than the new working-class voters in each seat. The same day he met Carnarvon and they both studied the figures, coming to the same result each time: "A complete revolution would be effected in the boroughs" due to the new majority of the working-class electorate. Cranborne wanted to send his resignation to Derby along with the statistics but Cranborne agreed to Carnarvon's suggestion that as a Cabinet member he had a right to call a Cabinet meeting. It was planned for the next day, 25 February. Cranborne wrote to Derby that he had discovered that Disraeli's plan would "throw the small boroughs almost, and many of them entirely, into the hands of the voter whose qualification is less than £10. I do not think that such a proceeding is for the interest of the country. I am sure that it is not in accordance with the hopes which those of us who took an active part in resisting Mr Gladstone's Bill last year in those whom we induced to vote for us". The Conservative boroughs with populations less than 25,000 (a majority of the boroughs in Parliament) would be very much worse off under Disraeli's scheme than the Liberal Reform Bill of the previous year: "But if I assented to this scheme, now that I know what its effect will be, I could not look in the face those whom last year I urged to resist Mr Gladstone. I am convinced that it will, if passed, be the ruin of the Conservative party".


text: When Cranborne entered the Cabinet meeting on 25 February "with reams of paper in his hands" he began by reading statistics but was interrupted to be told of the proposal by Lord Stanley that they should agree to a £6 borough rating franchise instead of the full household suffrage, and a £20 county franchise rather than £50. The Cabinet agreed to Stanley's proposal. The meeting was so contentious that a minister who was late initially thought they were debating the suspension of "habeas corpus". The next day another Cabinet meeting took place, with Cranborne saying little and the Cabinet adopting Disraeli's proposal to bring in a Bill in a week's time. On 28 February a meeting of the Carlton Club took place, with a majority of the 150 Conservative MPs present supporting Derby and Disraeli. At the Cabinet meeting on 2 March, Cranborne, Carnarvon and General Peel were pleaded with for two hours not to resign, but when Cranborne "announced his intention of resigning...Peel and Carnarvon, with evident reluctance, followed his example". Lord John Manners observed that Cranborne "remained unmoveable". Derby closed his red box with a sigh and stood up, saying "The Party is ruined!" Cranborne got up at the same time, with Peel remarking: "Lord Cranborne, do you hear what Lord Derby says?" Cranborne ignored this and the three resigning ministers left the room. Cranborne's resignation speech was met with loud cheers and Carnarvon observed that it was "moderate and in good taste – a sufficient justification for us who seceded and yet no disclosure of the frequent changes in policy in the Cabinet".


text: Disraeli introduced his Bill on 18 March and it would extend the suffrage to all rate-paying householders of two years' residence, dual voting for graduates or those of a learned profession, or those with £50 in governments funds or in the Bank of England or a savings bank. These "fancy franchises", as Cranborne had foreseen, did not survive the Bill's course through Parliament; dual voting was dropped in March, the compound householder vote in April; and the residential qualification was reduced in May. In the end the county franchise was granted to householders rated at £12 annually. On 15 July the third reading of the Bill took place and Cranborne spoke first, in a speech which his biographer Andrew Roberts has called "possibly the greatest oration of a career full of powerful parliamentary speeches". Cranborne observed how the Bill "bristled with precautions, guarantees and securities" had been stripped of these. He attacked Disraeli by pointing out how he had campaigned against the Liberal Bill in 1866 yet the next year introduced a Bill more extensive than the one rejected. In the peroration Cranborne said:


text: I desire to protest, in the most earnest language which I am capable of using, against the political morality on which the manoeuvres of this year have been based. If you borrow your political ethics from the ethics of the political adventurer, you may depend upon it the whole of your representative institutions will crumble beneath your feet. It is only because of that mutual trust in each other by which we ought to be animated, it is only because we believe that expressions and convictions expressed, and promises made, will be followed by deeds, that we are enabled to carry on this party Government which has led this country to so high a pitch of greatness. I entreat honourable Gentlemen opposite not to believe that my feelings on this subject are dictated simply by my hostility on this particular measure, though I object to it most strongly, as the House is aware. But, even if I took a contrary view – if I deemed it to be most advantageous, I still should deeply regret that the position of the Executive should have been so degraded as it has been in the present session: I should deeply regret to find that the House of Commons has applauded a policy of "legerdemain"; and I should, above all things, regret that this great gift to the people – if gift you think – should have been purchased at the cost of a political betrayal which has no parallel in our Parliamentary annals, which strikes at the root of all that mutual confidence which is the very soul of our party Government, and on which only the strength and freedom of our representative institutions can be sustained.


text: In his article for the October "Quarterly Review", entitled 'The Conservative Surrender', Cranborne criticised Derby because he had "obtained the votes which placed him in office on the faith of opinions which, to keep office, he immediately repudiated...He made up his mind to desert these opinions at the very moment he was being raised to power as their champion". Also, the annals of modern parliamentary history could find no parallel for Disraeli's betrayal; historians would have to look "to the days when Sunderland directed the Council, and accepted the favours of James when he was negotiating the invasion of William". Disraeli responded in a speech that Cranborne was "a very clever man who has made a very great mistake".


text: In 1868, on the death of his father, he inherited the Marquessate of Salisbury, thereby becoming a member of the House of Lords. In 1869 he was elected Chancellor of the University of Oxford and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. Between 1868 and 1871, he was chairman of the Great Eastern Railway, which was then experiencing losses. During his tenure, the company was taken out of Chancery, and paid out a small dividend on its ordinary shares.


text: From 1868 he was Honorary Colonel of the Hertfordshire Militia, which became the 4th (Militia) Battalion, Bedfordshire Regiment, in 1881, and which was commanded in South Africa during the Second Boer War by his eldest son.


text: Salisbury returned to government in 1874, serving once again as Secretary of State for India in the government of Benjamin Disraeli, and Britain's Ambassador Plenipotentiary at the 1876 Constantinople Conference. Salisbury gradually developed a good relationship with Disraeli, whom he had previously disliked and mistrusted.


text: During a Cabinet meeting on 7 March 1878, a discussion arose over whether to occupy Mytilene. Lord Derby recorded in his diary that "[o]f all present Salisbury by far the most eager for action: he talked of our sliding into a position of contempt: of our being humiliated etc." At the Cabinet meeting the next day, Derby recorded that Lord John Manners objected to occupying the city "on the ground of right. Salisbury treated scruples of this kind with marked contempt, saying, truly enough, that if our ancestors had cared for the rights of other people, the British empire would not have been made. He was more vehement than any one for going on. In the end the project was dropped..."


text: In 1878, Salisbury became foreign secretary in time to help lead Britain to "peace with honour" at the Congress of Berlin. For this he was rewarded with the Order of the Garter along with Disraeli.


text: Following Disraeli's death in 1881, the Conservatives entered a period of turmoil. The party's previous leaders had all been appointed as Prime Minister by the reigning monarch on advice from their retiring predecessor, and no process was in place to deal with leadership succession in case either the leadership became vacant while the party was in opposition, or the outgoing leader died without designating a successor, situations which both arose from the death of Disraeli (a formal leadership election system would not be adopted by the party until 1964, shortly after the government of Alec Douglas-Home fell). Salisbury became the leader of the Conservative members of the House of Lords, though the overall leadership of the party was not formally allocated. So he struggled with the Commons leader Sir Stafford Northcote, a struggle in which Salisbury eventually emerged as the leading figure. Historian Richard Shannon argues that while Salisbury presided over one of the longest periods of Tory dominance, he misinterpreted and mishandled his election successes. Salisbury's blindness to the middle class and reliance on the aristocracy prevented the Conservatives from becoming a majority party.


text: In 1884 Gladstone introduced a Reform Bill which would extend the suffrage to two million rural workers. Salisbury and Northcote agreed that any Reform Bill would be supported only if a parallel redistributionary measure was introduced as well. In a speech in the Lords, Salisbury claimed: "Now that the people have in no real sense been consulted, when they had, at the last General Election, no notion of what was coming upon them, I feel that we are bound, as guardians of their interests, to call upon the government to appeal to the people, and by the result of that appeal we will abide". The Lords rejected the Bill and Parliament was prorogued for ten weeks. Writing to Canon Malcolm MacColl, Salisbury believed that Gladstone's proposals for reform without redistribution would mean "the absolute effacement of the Conservative Party. It would not have reappeared as a political force for thirty years. This conviction...greatly simplified for me the computation of risks". At a meeting of the Carlton Club on 15 July, Salisbury announced his plan for making the government introduce a Seats (or Redistribution) Bill in the Commons whilst at the same time delaying a Franchise Bill in the Lords. The unspoken implication being that Salisbury would relinquish the party leadership if his plan was not supported. Although there was some dissent, Salisbury carried the party with him.


text: Salisbury wrote to Lady John Manners on 14 June that he did not regard female suffrage as a question of high importance "but when I am told that my ploughmen are capable citizens, it seems to me ridiculous to say that educated women are not just as capable. A good deal of the political battle of the future will be a conflict between religion and unbelief: & the women will in that controversy be on the right side".


text: On 21 July, a large meeting for reform was held at Hyde Park. Salisbury said in "The Times" that "the employment of mobs as an instrument of public policy is likely to prove a sinister precedent". On 23 July at Sheffield, Salisbury said that the government "imagine that thirty thousand Radicals going to amuse themselves in London on a given day expresses the public opinion of the day...they appeal to the streets, they attempt legislation by picnic". Salisbury further claimed that Gladstone adopted reform as a "cry" to deflect attention from his foreign and economic policies at the next election. He claimed that the House of Lords was protecting the British constitution: "I do not care whether it is an hereditary chamber or any other – to see that the representative chamber does not alter the tenure of its own power so as to give a perpetual lease of that power to the party in predominance at the moment".


text: On 25 July at a reform meeting in Leicester consisting of 40,000 people, Salisbury was burnt in effigy and a banner quoted Shakespeare's "Henry VI": "Old Salisbury – shame to thy silver hair, Thou mad misleader". On 9 August in Manchester, over 100,000 came to hear Salisbury speak. On 30 September at Glasgow, he said: "We wish that the franchise should pass but that before you make new voters you should determine the constitution in which they are to vote". Salisbury published an article in the "National Review" for October, titled ‘The Value of Redistribution: A Note on Electoral Statistics’. He claimed that the Conservatives "have no cause, for Party reasons, to dread enfranchisement coupled with a fair redistribution". Judging by the 1880 results, Salisbury asserted that the overall loss to the Conservatives of enfranchisement without redistribution would be 47 seats. Salisbury spoke throughout Scotland and claimed that the government had no mandate for reform when it had not appealed to the people.


text: Gladstone offered wavering Conservatives a compromise a little short of enfranchisement and redistribution, and after the Queen unsuccessfully attempted to persuade Salisbury to compromise, he wrote to Rev. James Baker on 30 October: "Politics stand alone among human pursuits in this characteristic, that no one is conscious of liking them – and no one is able to leave them. But whatever affection they may have had they are rapidly losing. The difference between now and thirty years ago when I entered the House of Commons is inconceivable".


text: On 11 November, the Franchise Bill received its third reading in the Commons and it was due to get a second reading in the Lords. The day after at a meeting of Conservative leaders, Salisbury was outnumbered in his opposition to compromise. On 13 February, Salisbury rejected MacColl's idea that he should meet Gladstone, as he believed the meeting would be found out and that Gladstone had no genuine desire to negotiate. On 17 November, it was reported in the newspapers that if the Conservatives gave "adequate assurance" that the Franchise Bill would pass the Lords before Christmas the government would ensure that a parallel Seats Bill would receive its second reading in the Commons as the Franchise Bill went into committee stage in the Lords. Salisbury responded by agreeing only if the Franchise Bill came second. The Carlton Club met to discuss the situation, with Salisbury's daughter writing:


text: The three arch-funkers Cairns, Richmond and Carnarvon cried out declaring that he would accept no compromise at all as it was absurd to imagine the Government conceding it. When the discussion was at its height (very high) enter Arthur [Balfour] with explicit declamation dictated by GOM in Hartington's handwriting yielding the point entirely. Tableau and triumph along the line for the 'stiff' policy which had obtained terms which the funkers had not dared hope for. My father's prevailing sentiment is one of complete wonder...we have got all and more than we demanded.


text: Despite the controversy which had raged, the meetings of leading Liberals and Conservatives on reform at Downing Street were amicable. Salisbury and the Liberal Sir Charles Dilke dominated discussions as they had both closely studied in detail the effects of reform on the constituencies. After one of the last meetings on 26 November, Gladstone told his secretary that "Lord Salisbury, who seems to monopolise all the say on his side, has no respect for tradition. As compared with him, Mr Gladstone declares he is himself quite a Conservative. They got rid of the boundary question, minority representation, grouping and the Irish difficulty. The question was reduced to... for or against single member constituencies". The Reform Bill laid down that the majority of the 670 constituencies were to be roughly equal size and return one member; those between 50,000 and 165,000 kept the two-member representation and those over 165,000 and all the counties were split up into single-member constituencies. This franchise existed until 1918.


text: In the November 1883 issue of "National Review" Salisbury wrote an article titled "Labourers' and Artisans' Dwellings" in which he argued that the poor conditions of working class housing were injurious to morality and health. Salisbury said ""Laissez-faire" is an admirable doctrine but it must be applied on both sides", as Parliament had enacted new building projects (such as the Thames Embankment) which had displaced working-class people and was responsible for "packing the people tighter": "...thousands of families have only a single room to dwell in, where they sleep and eat, multiply, and die… It is difficult to exaggerate the misery which such conditions of life must cause, or the impulse they must give to vice. The depression of body and mind which they create is an almost insuperable obstacle to the action of any elevating or refining agencies". The "Pall Mall Gazette" argued that Salisbury had sailed into "the turbid waters of State Socialism"; the "Manchester Guardian" said his article was "State socialism pure and simple" and "The Times" claimed Salisbury was "in favour of state socialism".


text: In July 1885 the Housing of the Working Classes Bill was introduced by the Home Secretary, R. A. Cross in the Commons and Salisbury in the Lords. When Lord Wemyss criticised the Bill as "strangling the spirit of independence and the self-reliance of the people, and destroying the moral fibre of our race in the anaconda coils of state socialism", Salisbury responded: "Do not imagine that by merely affixing to it the reproach of Socialism you can seriously affect the progress of any great legislative movement, or destroy those high arguments which are derived from the noblest principles of philanthropy and religion". The Bill ultimately passed and came into effect on 14 August 1885.


text: Although unable to accomplish much due to his lack of a parliamentary majority, the split of the Liberals over Irish Home Rule in 1886 enabled him to return to power with a majority, and, excepting a Liberal minority government (1892–95), to serve as prime minister from 1886 to 1902.


text: Salisbury was back in office, although without a conservative majority; he depended on the Liberal Unionists, led by Lord Hartington. Maintaining the alliance forced Salisbury to make concessions in support of progressive legislation regarding Irish land purchases, education, and county councils. His nephew Arthur Balfour acquired a strong reputation for resolute coercion in Ireland, and was promoted to leadership in the Commons in 1891. The Prime Minister proved adept at his handling of the press, as Sir Edward Walter Hamilton noted in his diary in 1887 he was: "the prime minister most accessible to the press. He is not prone to give information: but when he does, he gives it freely, & his information can always be relied on."


text: Salisbury once again kept the foreign office (from January 1887), and his diplomacy continued to display a high level of skill, avoiding the extremes of Gladstone on the left and Disraeli on the right. His policy rejected entangling alliances–which at the time and ever since has been called "splendid isolation." He was successful in negotiating differences over colonial claims with France and others. The major problems were in the Mediterranean, where British interest had been involved for a century. It was now especially important to protect the Suez Canal and the sea lanes to India and Asia. He ended Britain's isolation through the Mediterranean Agreements (March and December 1887) with Italy and Austria-Hungary. He saw the need for maintaining control of the seas and passed the Naval Defence Act 1889, which facilitated the spending of an extra £20 million on the Royal Navy over the following four years. This was the biggest ever expansion of the navy in peacetime: ten new battleships, thirty-eight new cruisers, eighteen new torpedo boats and four new fast gunboats. Traditionally (since the Battle of Trafalgar) Britain had possessed a navy one-third larger than their nearest naval rival but now the Royal Navy was set to the two-power standard; that it would be maintained "to a standard of strength equivalent to that of the combined forces of the next two biggest navies in the world". This was aimed at France and Russia.


text: Salisbury was offered a dukedom by Queen Victoria in 1886 and 1892, but declined both offers, citing the prohibitive cost of the lifestyle dukes were expected to maintain and stating that he would rather have an ancient marquessate than a modern dukedom.


text: Trouble arose with Portugal, which had overextended itself in building a colonial empire in Africa it could ill afford. There was a clash of colonial visions between Portugal (the "Pink Map", produced by the Lisbon Geographic Society after Alexandre de Serpa Pinto's, Hermenegildo Capelo's and Roberto Ivens's expeditions to Africa) and the British Empire (Cecil Rhodes's "Cape to Cairo Railway") came after years of diplomatic conflict about several African territories with Portugal and other powers. Portugal, financially hard-pressed, had to abandon several territories corresponding to today's Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe in favour of the Empire.


text: In 1889 Salisbury set up the London County Council and then in 1890 allowed it to build houses. However, he came to regret this, saying in November 1894 that the LCC, "is the place where collectivist and socialistic experiments are tried. It is the place where a new revolutionary spirit finds its instruments and collects its arms".


text: Salisbury caused controversy in 1888 after Gainsford Bruce had won the Holborn by-election for the Unionists, beating the Liberal Lord Compton. Bruce had won the seat with a smaller majority than Francis Duncan had for the Unionists in 1885. Salisbury explained this by saying in a speech in Edinburgh on 30 November: "But then Colonel Duncan was opposed to a black man, and, however great the progress of mankind has been, and however far we have advanced in overcoming prejudices, I doubt if we have yet got to the point where a British constituency will elect a black man to represent them... I am speaking roughly and using language in its colloquial sense, because I imagine the colour is not exactly black, but at all events, he was a man of another race".


text: The "black man" was Dadabhai Naoroji, an Indian Parsi. Salisbury's comments were criticised by the Queen and by Liberals who believed that Salisbury had suggested that only white Britons could represent a British constituency. Three weeks later, Salisbury delivered a speech at Scarborough, where he denied that "the word "black" necessarily implies any contemptuous denunciation: "Such a doctrine seems to be a scathing insult to a very large proportion of the human race... The people whom we have been fighting at Suakin, and whom we have happily conquered, are among the finest tribes in the world, and many of them are as black as my hat". Furthermore, "such candidatures are incongruous and unwise. The British House of Commons, with its traditions... is a machine too peculiar and too delicate to be managed by any but those who have been born within these isles". Naoroji was elected for Finsbury in 1892 and Salisbury invited him to become a Governor of the Imperial Institute, which he accepted. In 1888, the New York Times published an article that was extremely critical of Lord Salisbury's remark. It included the following quotation, "Of course the parsees are not black men, but the purest Aryan type in existence, with an average complexion fairer than Lord Salisbury's; but even if they were ebony hued it would be grotesque and foolish for a Prime Minister of England to insult them in such a wanton fashion as this."


text: Documents in the Foreign Office archives revealed that Salisbury was made aware of a rape in 1891 and other atrocities carried out against women and children in the Niger Delta by Consul George Annesley and his soldiers but took no action against Annesley, who was "quietly pensioned off."


text: In the aftermath of the general election of 1892, Balfour and Chamberlain wished to pursue a programme of social reform, which Salisbury believed would alienate "a good many people who have always been with us" and that "these social questions are destined to break up our party". When the Liberals and Irish Nationalists (which were a majority in the new Parliament) successfully voted against the government, Salisbury resigned the premiership on 12 August. His private secretary at the Foreign Office wrote that Salisbury "shewed indecent joy at his release".


text: Salisbury—in an article in November for the "National Review" entitled 'Constitutional revision'—said that the new government, lacking a majority in England and Scotland, had no mandate for Home Rule and argued that because there was no referendum only the House of Lords could provide the necessary consultation with the nation on policies for organic change. The Lords defeated the second Home Rule Bill by 419 to 41 in September 1893, but Salisbury stopped them from opposing the Liberal Chancellor's death duties in 1894. In 1894 Salisbury also became president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, presenting a notable inaugural address on 4 August of that year. The general election of 1895 returned a large Unionist majority.


text: Salisbury's expertise was in foreign affairs. For most of his time as prime minister he served not as First Lord of the Treasury, the traditional position held by the prime minister, but as foreign secretary. In that capacity, he managed Britain's foreign affairs, but he was being sarcastic about a policy of "Splendid isolation"—such was not his goal.


text: In the foreign affairs Salisbury was challenged worldwide, The long-standing policy of "Splendid isolation" had left Britain with no allies and few friends. In Europe, Germany was worrisome regarding its growing industrial and naval power, Kaiser Wilhelm's erratic foreign policy, and the instability caused by the decline of the Ottoman Empire. France was threatening British control of Sudan. In the Americas, for domestic political reasons, U.S. President Cleveland manufactured a quarrel over Venezuela's border with British Guiana. In South Africa conflict was threatening with the two Boer republics. In the Great Game in Central Asia, the line that separated Russia and British India in 1800 was narrowing. In China the British economic dominance was threatened by other powers that wanted to control slices of China.


text: The tension with Germany had subsided in 1890 after a deal exchanged German holdings in East Africa for an island off the German coast. However, with peace-minded Bismarck retired by an aggressive new Kaiser, tensions rose and negotiations faltered. France retreated in Africa after the British dominated in the Fashoda Incident. The Venezuela crisis was settled amicably and London and Washington became friendly after Salisbury gave Washington what it wanted in the Alaska boundary dispute. The Open Door Policy and a 1902 treaty with Japan resolved the China crisis. However, in South Africa a nasty Boer war broke out in 1899 and for a few months it seemed the Boers were winning.


text: In 1895 the Venezuelan crisis with the United States erupted. A border dispute between the colony of British Guiana and Venezuela caused a major Anglo-American crisis when the United States intervened to take Venezuela's side. Propaganda sponsored by Venezuela convinced American public opinion that the British were infringing on Venezuelan territory. The United States demanded an explanation and Salisbury refused. The crisis escalated when President Grover Cleveland, citing the Monroe Doctrine, issued an ultimatum in late 1895. Salisbury's cabinet convinced him he had to go to arbitration. Both sides calmed down and the issue was quickly resolved through arbitration which largely upheld the British position on the legal boundary line. Salisbury remained angry but a consensus was reached in London, led by Lord Landsdowne, to seek much friendlier relations with the United States. By standing with a Latin American nation against the encroachment of the British, the US improved relations with the Latin Americans, and the cordial manner of the procedure improved American diplomatic relations with Britain. Despite the popularity of the Boers in American public opinion, official Washington supported London in the Second Boer War.


text: An Anglo-German agreement (1890) resolved conflicting claims in East Africa; Great Britain received large territories in Zanzibar and Uganda in exchange for the small island of Helgoland in the North Sea. Negotiations with Germany on broader issues failed. In January 1896 the reckless German Kaiser Wilhelm II escalated tensions in South Africa with his Kruger telegram congratulating Boer President Paul Kruger of the Transvaal for beating off the British Jameson Raid. German officials in Berlin had managed to stop the Kaiser from proposing a German protectorate over the Transvaal. The telegram backfired, as the British began to see Germany as a major threat. The British moved their forces from Egypt south into Sudan in 1898, securing complete control of that troublesome region. However, a strong British force unexpectedly confronted a small French military expedition at Fashoda. Salisbury quickly resolved the tensions, and systematically moved toward friendlier relations with France.


text: After gold was discovered in the South African Republic (called Transvaal) in the 1880s, thousands of British men flocked to the gold mines. Transvaal and its sister republic the Orange Free State were small, rural, independent nations founded by Afrikaners, who descended from Dutch immigrants to the area before 1800. The newly arrived miners were needed for their labour and business operations but were distrusted by the Afrikaners, who called them "uitlanders." The uitlanders heavily outnumbered the Boers in cities and mining districts; they had to pay heavy taxes, and had limited civil rights and no right to vote. The British, jealous of the gold and diamond mines and highly protective of its people, demanded reforms, which were rejected. A small-scale private British effort to overthrow Transvaal's President Paul Kruger, the Jameson Raid of 1895, was a fiasco and presaged full-scale conflict as all diplomatic efforts failed.


text: War started on 11 October 1899 and ended on 31 May 1902 as Great Britain faced the two small far-away Boer nations. The Prime Minister let his extremely energetic colonial minister Joseph Chamberlain take charge of the war. British efforts were based from its Cape Colony and the Colony of Natal. There were some native African allies, but generally both sides avoided using black soldiers. The British war effort was further supported by volunteers from across the Empire. All other nations were neutral, but public opinion in them was largely hostile to Britain. Inside Britain and its Empire there also was a significant opposition to the Second Boer War because of the atrocities and military failures.


text: The British were overconfident and underprepared. Chamberlain and other top London officials ignored the repeated warnings of military advisors that the Boers were well prepared, well armed, and fighting for their homes in a very difficult terrain. The Boers with about 33,000 soldiers, against 13,000 front-line British troops, struck first, besieging Ladysmith, Kimberly, and Mafeking, and winning important battles at Colenso, Magersfontein and Stormberg in late 1899. Staggered, the British fought back, relieved its besieged cities, and prepared to invade first the Orange Free State, and then Transvaal in late 1900. The Boers refused to surrender or negotiate, and reverted to guerrilla warfare. After two years of hard fighting, Britain, using over 400,000 soldiers systematically destroyed the resistance, raising worldwide complaints about brutality. The Boers were fighting for their homes and families, who provided them with food and hiding places. The British solution was to forcefully relocate all the Boer civilians into heavily guarded concentration camps, where 28,000 died of disease. Then it systematically blocked off and tracked down the highly mobile Boer combat units. The battles were small operations; most of the 22,000 British dead were victims of disease. The war cost £217 million and demonstrated the Army urgently needed reforms but it ended in victory for the British and the Conservatives won the Khaki election of 1900. The Boers were given generous terms, and both former republics were incorporated into the Union of South Africa in 1910.


text: The war had many vehement critics, predominantly in the Liberal party. However, on the whole, the war was well received by the British public, which staged numerous public demonstrations and parades of support. Soon there were memorials built across Britain. Strong public demand for news coverage meant that the war was well covered by journalists – including young Winston Churchill – and photographers, as well as letter-writers and poets. General Sir Redvers Buller imposed strict censorship and had no friends in the media, who wrote him up as a blundering buffoon. In dramatic contrast, Field Marshal Frederick Roberts pampered the press, which responded by making him a national hero.


text: In 1897 Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz became German Naval Secretary of State and began the transformation of the Imperial German Navy from a small, coastal defence force to a fleet meant to challenge British naval power. Tirpitz called for a "Risikoflotte" or "risk fleet" that would make it too risky for Britain to take on Germany as part of wider bid to alter the international balance of power decisively in Germany's favour. At the same time German foreign minister Bernhard von Bülow called for "Weltpolitik" (world politics). It was the new policy of Germany to assert its claim to be a global power. Chancellor Otto von Bismarck's policy of "Realpolitik" (realistic politics) was abandoned as Germany was intent on challenging and upsetting international order. The long-run result was the inability of Britain and Germany to be friends or to form an alliance.


text: Britain reacted to Germany's accelerated naval arms race by major innovations, especially those developed by Admiral Fisher. The most important development was unveiled – after Salisbury's death – the entry of into service in 1906, which rendered all the world's battleships obsolete and set back German plans.


text: Historians agree that Salisbury was a strong and effective leader in foreign affairs. He had a superb grasp of the issues, and was never a "splendid isolationist" but rather, says Nancy W. Ellenberger, was:A patient, pragmatic practitioner, with a keen understanding of Britain's historic interests ... He oversaw the partition of Africa, the emergence of Germany and the United States as imperial powers, and the transfer of British attention from the Dardanelles to Suez without provoking a serious confrontation of the great powers.


text: At home he sought to "kill Home Rule with kindness" by launching a land reform programme which helped hundreds of thousands of Irish peasants gain land ownership and largely ended complaints against English landlords. The Elementary School Teachers (Superannuation) Act of 1898 enabled teachers to secure an annuity via the payment of voluntary contributions. The Elementary Education (Defective and Epileptic Children) Act of 1899 permitted school boards to provide for the education of mentally and physically defective and epileptic children.


text: In 1895 and 1900 he was honoured with appointments as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports and High Steward of the City and Liberty of Westminster, which he held for life.


text: On 11 July 1902, in failing health and broken hearted over the death of his wife, Salisbury resigned. He was succeeded by his nephew, Arthur Balfour. King Edward VII conferred upon him the Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order (GCVO), with the order star set in brilliants, during his resignation audience.


text: Salisbury, due to breathing difficulties caused by his great weight, took to sleeping in a chair at Hatfield House. By then he also experienced a heart condition and later blood poisoning caused by an ulcerated leg. His death in August 1903 followed a fall from that chair.


text: Salisbury was buried at St Etheldreda's Church, Hatfield, where his predecessor as prime minister, Lord Melbourne, is also interred. Salisbury is commemorated with a monumental cenotaph near the west door of Westminster Abbey.


text: Many historians portray Salisbury as a principled statesman of traditional, aristocratic conservatism: a prime minister who promoted cautious imperialism and resisted sweeping parliamentary and franchise reforms. Robert Blake considers Salisbury "a great foreign minister, [but] essentially negative, indeed reactionary in home affairs". Professor P.T. Marsh's estimate is more favourable than Blake's; he portrays Salisbury as a leader who "held back the popular tide for twenty years." Professor Paul Smith argues that, "into the ‘progressive’ strain of modern Conservatism he simply will not fit." H.C.G. Matthew points to "the narrow cynicism of Salisbury." One admirer, conservative historian Maurice Cowling, largely agrees with the critics and says Salisbury found the democracy born of the 1867 and 1884 Reform Acts as "perhaps less objectionable than he had expected—succeeding, through his public persona, in mitigating some part of its nastiness." Historian Peter T. Marsh states: "In the field of foreign affairs, where he was happiest and most successful, he kept his own counsel and eschewed broad principles of conduct, preferring close-eyed realism and reliability of conduct."


text: Considerable attention has been devoted to his writings and ideas. The Conservative historian Robert Blake considered Salisbury "the most formidable intellectual figure that the Conservative party has ever produced". In 1977 the Salisbury Group was founded, chaired by Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 6th Marquess of Salisbury and named after the 3rd Marquess. It published pamphlets advocating conservative policies. The academic quarterly "The Salisbury Review" was named in his honour (by Michael Oakeshott) upon its founding in 1982. Cowling claimed that "The giant of conservative doctrine is Salisbury". It was on Cowling's suggestion that Paul Smith edited a collection of Salisbury's articles from the "Quarterly Review". Andrew Jones and Michael Bentley wrote in 1978 that "historical inattention" to Salisbury "involves wilful dismissal of a Conservative tradition which recognizes that threat to humanity when ruling authorities engage in democratic flattery and the threat to liberty in a competitive rush of legislation".


text: In 1967, Clement Attlee (Labour Party prime minister, 1945–51) was asked who he thought was the best prime minister of his lifetime. Attlee immediately replied: "Salisbury".


text: The 6th Marquess of Salisbury commissioned Andrew Roberts to write Salisbury's authorised biography, which was published in 1999.


text: After the Bering Sea Arbitration, Canadian Prime Minister Sir John Sparrow David Thompson said of Lord Salisbury's acceptance of the Arbitration Treaty that it was "one of the worst acts of what I regard as a very stupid and worthless life".


text: The British phrase 'Bob's your uncle' is thought to have derived from Robert Cecil's appointment of his nephew, Arthur Balfour, as Chief Secretary for Ireland.


text: Fort Salisbury (now Harare) was named in honour of him when it was founded in September 1890. Subsequently, simply known as Salisbury, the city became the capital of Southern Rhodesia, from 1890, the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland from 1953–1963, Rhodesia from 1963–1979, Zimbabwe Rhodesia, in 1979, and finally Zimbabwe, from 1980. The name was changed to Harare in April 1982, on the second anniversary of Zimbabwe's independence. Cecil Square, near to Parliament, was also named after him and not, as is erroneously but popularly thought, after Cecil Rhodes. Other Rhodesian/Zimbabwean connections include the suburbs of Hatfield, Cranborne and New Sarum.


text: To date he is the only British prime minister to sport a full beard. At tall, he was also the tallest prime minister.


text: Lord Salisbury was the third son of James Gascoyne-Cecil, 2nd Marquess of Salisbury, a minor Conservative politician. In 1857, he defied his father, who wanted him to marry a rich heiress to protect the family's lands. He instead married Georgina Alderson, the daughter of Sir Edward Alderson, a moderately notable judge and of lower social standing than the Cecils. The marriage proved a happy one. Robert and Georgina had eight children, all but one of whom survived infancy. He was an indulgent father and made sure his children had a much better childhood than the one through which he suffered. Cut off from his family money, Robert supported his family through journalism and was later reconciled with his father.


text: Salisbury had prosopagnosia, a cognitive disorder which makes it difficult to recognize familiar faces.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir (, pronounced ; born 1944) is a Sudanese former military officer and politician who served as the seventh head of state of Sudan under various titles from 1989 until 2019, when he was deposed in a coup d'état. He was subsequently incarcerated, tried and convicted on multiple corruption charges. He came to power in 1989 when, as a brigadier general in the Sudanese Army, he led a group of officers in a military coup that ousted the democratically elected government of prime minister Sadiq al-Mahdi after it began negotiations with rebels in the south. He was elected three times as president in elections that have been under scrutiny for electoral fraud. In 1992, al-Bashir founded the National Congress Party, which remained the dominant political party in the country until 2019. In March 2009, al-Bashir became the first sitting head of state to be indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC), for allegedly directing a campaign of mass killing, rape, and pillage against civilians in Darfur. On 11 February 2020, the Sudanese government announced that it had agreed to hand over al-Bashir to the ICC for trial.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: In October 2005, al-Bashir's government negotiated an end to the Second Sudanese Civil War, leading to a referendum in the South, resulting in the separation of the south as the country of South Sudan. In the Darfur region, he oversaw the war in Darfur that resulted in death tolls that are about 10,000 according to the Sudanese Government, but most sources suggest between 200,000 and 400,000. During his presidency, there have been several violent struggles between the Janjaweed militia and rebel groups such as the Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) in the form of guerrilla warfare in the Darfur region. The civil war displaced over out of a total population of 6.2 million in Darfur and created a crisis in the diplomatic relations between Sudan and Chad. The rebels in Darfur lost the support from Libya after the death of Muammar Gaddafi and the collapse of his regime in 2011.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: In July 2008, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Luis Moreno Ocampo, accused al-Bashir of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in Darfur. The court issued an arrest warrant for al-Bashir on 2009 on counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, but ruled that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute him for genocide. However, on 12 July 2010, the court issued a second warrant containing three separate counts of genocide. The new warrant, like the first, was delivered to the Sudanese government, which did not recognize either the warrant or the ICC. The indictments do not allege that Bashir personally took part in such activities; instead, they say that he is "suspected of being criminally responsible, as an indirect co-perpetrator". The court's decision was opposed by the African Union, Arab League and Non-Aligned Movement as well as the governments of Libya, Somalia, Jordan, Turkey, Egypt, South Sudan, Djibouti, Eritrea, Pakistan, Algeria, Iraq, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Lebanon, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, the United States and the Netherlands.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: From December 2018 onwards, al-Bashir faced large-scale protests which demanded his removal from power. On 11 April 2019, Bashir was ousted in a military coup d'état. In September 2019, Bashir was replaced by the Transitionary Military Council which transferred executive power to a mixed civilian–military Sovereignty Council and a civilian prime minister, Abdalla Hamdok. Two months later, the Forces of Freedom and Change alliance (which holds indirect political power during the 39-month Sudanese transition to democracy), Hamdok, and Sovereignty Council member Siddiq Tawer stated that Bashir would be eventually transferred to the ICC. He was convicted of corruption in December of that year and sentenced to two years in prison. His trial regarding his role in the coup that brought him into power started on 21 July 2020.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: Al-Bashir was born in Hosh Bannaga, a village on the outskirts of Shendi, just north of the capital, Khartoum, to a family of African-Arab descent. His mother was Hedieh Mohamed al-Zain, who died in 2019. His father, Hassan ibn Ahmed, was a smalltime dairy farmer. His uncle, Al Taib Mustafa, was a journalist, politician, and noted opponent of South Sudan. As a boy, he was nicknamed 'Omeira' – Little Omar. He belongs to Banu Bedaria, a Bedouin tribe belonging to the larger Ja'alin coalition, an Arabized Nubian tribe in middle north of Sudan (once a part of the Kingdom of Egypt and Sudan). As a child, Al-Bashir loved soccer. "Always in defence," a cousin said. "That's why he went into the army." He received his primary education there, and his family later moved to Khartoum North where he completed his secondary education and became a supporter of Al-Hilal. Al-Bashir is married to his cousin Fatima Khalid. He also has a second wife named Widad Babiker Omer, who had a number of children with her first husband Ibrahim Shamsaddin, a member of the Revolutionary Command Council for National Salvation who had died in a helicopter crash. Al-Bashir does not have any children of his own.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: In 1975, Al-Bashir was sent to the United Arab Emirates as the Sudanese military attaché. When he returned home, al-Bashir was made a garrison commander. In 1981, al-Bashir returned to his paratroop background when he became the commander of an armored parachute brigade.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: The Sudanese Ministry of Defense website says that al-Bashir was in the Western Command from 1967 to 1969 and then the Airborne Forces from 1969 to 1987 until he was appointed commander of the 8th Infantry Brigade (independent) from the period 1987 to 30 June 1989.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: When he returned to Sudan as a colonel in the Sudanese Army, al-Bashir led a group of army officers in ousting the unstable coalition government of Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi in a bloodless military coup on 1989. Under al-Bashir's leadership, the new military government suspended political parties and introduced an Islamic legal code on the national level. He then became chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council for National Salvation (a newly established body with legislative and executive powers for what was described as a transitional period), and assumed the posts of chief of state, prime minister, chief of the armed forces, and Minister of Defence. Subsequent to al-Bashir's promotion to the chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council for National Salvation, he allied himself with Hassan al-Turabi, the leader of the National Islamic Front, who, along with al-Bashir, began institutionalizing Sharia law in the northern part of Sudan. Further on, al-Bashir issued purges and executions of people whom he alleged to be coup leaders in the upper ranks of the army, the banning of associations, political parties, and independent newspapers, as well as the imprisonment of leading political figures and journalists.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: On 16 October 1993, al-Bashir's powers increased when he appointed himself President of the country, after which he disbanded the Revolutionary Command Council for National Salvation and all other rival political parties. The executive and legislative powers of the council were later given to al-Bashir completely. In the early 1990s, al-Bashir's administration gave the green light to float a new currency called Sudanese dinar to replace the battered old Sudanese pound that had lost 90 percent of its worth during the turbulent 1980s; the currency was later changed back to pounds, but at a much higher rate. He was later elected president (with a five-year term) in the 1996 national election, where he was the only candidate by law to run for election.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: Omar al-Bashir was elected president (with a five-year term) in the 1996 national election and Hassan al-Turabi was elected to a seat in the National Assembly where he served as speaker of the National Assembly "during the 1990s". In 1998, al-Bashir and the Presidential Committee put into effect a new constitution, allowing limited political associations in opposition to al-Bashir's National Congress Party and his supporters to be formed. On 1999, al-Bashir sent troops and tanks against parliament and ousted Hassan al-Turabi, the speaker of parliament, in a palace coup.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: He was reelected by popular vote for a five-year term in presidential elections held on 13–23 December 2000.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: From 2005 to 2010, a transitional government was set up under a 2005 peace accord that ended more than two decades of north–south civil war and saw the formation of a power-sharing agreement between Salva Kiir's SPLM and Al Bashir's National Congress Party (NCP).


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: In the first multi-party election, al-Bashir was reelected president in the 2010 presidential election; while Salva Kiir, the leader of the former rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), won re-election in the presidential poll in what was Sudan's semi-autonomous southern region. These elections were agreed on earlier in the 2005 peace accord that ended more than two decades of north–south civil war.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: Al-Bashir won 68% of the popular vote in the 2010 election. However, the election was marked by corruption, intimidation, and inequality. European observers, from the EU and the Carter Centre, criticised the polls as "not meeting international standards". Candidates opposed to the SPLM said they were often detained, or stopped from campaigning. Sudan Democracy First, an umbrella organisation in the north, put forward what it called strong evidence of rigging by al-Bashir's National Congress Party. The Sudanese Network for Democracy and Elections (Sunde) spoke of harassment and intimidation in the south, by the security forces of the SPLM.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: Al-Bashir had achieved economic growth in Sudan. This was pushed further by the drilling and extraction of oil- However, economic growth has not been shared by all. Headline inflation in 2012 approached the threshold of chronic inflation (period average 36%), about 11% up from the budget projection of 2012 reflecting the combined effects of inflationary financing, the depreciation of the exchange rate, and the continued removal of subsidies, as well as high food and energy prices. This economic downturn prompted cost of living riots that erupted into Arab Spring-style anti-government demonstrations, raising discontent within the Sudanese Workers' Trade Union Federation (SWTUF). They threatened to hold nationwide strikes in support of higher wages. The continued deterioration in the value of the Sudanese pound (SDG) posed grave downside risks to already soaring inflation. This, coupled with the economic slowdown, presents serious challenges to the implementation of the approved Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (I-PRSP).


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: In the mid-1990s, a feud between al-Bashir and al-Turabi began, mostly due to al-Turabi's links to Islamic fundamentalist groups, as well as allowing them to operate out of Sudan, even personally inviting Osama bin Laden to the country. The United States had listed Sudan as a state sponsor of terrorism since 1993, mostly due to al-Bashir and Hassan al-Turabi taking complete power in the early 1990s. U.S. firms have been barred from doing business in Sudan since 1997. In 1998, the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum was destroyed by a U.S. cruise missile strike because of its alleged production of chemical weapons and links to al-Qaeda. However the U.S. State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research wrote a report in 1999 questioning the attack on the factory, suggesting that the connection to bin Laden was not accurate; James Risen reported in "The New York Times": "Now, the analysts renewed their doubts and told Assistant Secretary of State Phyllis Oakley that the C.I.A.'s evidence on which the attack was based was inadequate. Ms. Oakley asked them to double-check; perhaps there was some intelligence they had not yet seen. The answer came back quickly: There was no additional evidence. Ms. Oakley called a meeting of key aides and a consensus emerged: Contrary to what the Administration was saying, the case tying Al Shifa to Mr. bin Laden or to chemical weapons was weak."


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: After being re-elected president of Sudan with a five-year-term in the 1996 election with 75.7% of the votes, al-Bashir issued the registration of legalised political parties in 1999 after being influenced by al-Turabi. Rival parties such as the Liberal Democrats of Sudan and the Alliance of the Peoples' Working Forces, headed by former Sudanese President Gaafar Nimeiry, were established and were allowed to run for election against al-Bashir's National Congress Party, however, they failed to achieve significant support, and al-Bashir was re-elected president, receiving 86.5% of the vote in the 2000 presidential election. At the legislative elections that same year, al-Bashir's National Congress Party won 355 out of 360 seats, with al-Turabi as its chairman. However, after al-Turabi introduced a bill to reduce the president's powers, prompting al-Bashir to dissolve parliament and declare a state of emergency, tensions began to rise between al-Bashir and al-Turabi. Reportedly, al-Turabi was suspended as chairman of National Congress Party, after he urged a boycott of the president's re-election campaign. Then, a splinter-faction led by al-Turabi, the Popular National Congress Party (PNC) signed an agreement with Sudan People's Liberation Army, which led al-Bashir to believe that they were plotting to overthrow him and the government.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: Further on, al-Turabi's influence and that of his party's "'internationalist' and ideological wing" waned "in favor of the 'nationalist' or more pragmatic leaders who focus on trying to recover from Sudan's disastrous international isolation and economic damage that resulted from ideological adventurism". At the same time, Sudan worked to appease the United States and other international critics by expelling members of Egyptian Islamic Jihad and encouraging bin Laden to leave.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: On al-Bashir's orders, al-Turabi was imprisoned based on allegations of conspiracy in 2000 before being released in October 2003. Al-Turabi was again imprisoned in March 2004 and released in July 2005, at the height of the peace agreement in the civil war.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: From the early 1990s, after al-Bashir assumed power, Sudan backed Iraq in its invasion of Kuwait and was accused of harboring and providing sanctuary and assistance to Islamic terrorist groups. Carlos the Jackal, Osama bin Laden, Abu Nidal and others labeled "terrorist leaders" by the United States and its allies resided in Khartoum. Sudan's role in the radical Pan-Arab Islamic Conference, spearheaded by Hassan al-Turabi, represented a matter of great concern to the security of American officials and dependents in Khartoum, resulting in several reductions and evacuations of American personnel from Khartoum in the early to mid 1990s.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: Sudan's Islamist links with international terrorist organizations represented a special matter of concern for the American government, leading to Sudan's 1993 designation as a state sponsor of terrorism and a suspension of U.S. Embassy operations in Khartoum in 1996. In late 1994, in an initial effort to reverse his nation's growing image throughout the world as a country harboring terrorists, Bashir secretly cooperated with French special forces to orchestrate the capture and arrest on Sudanese soil of Carlos the Jackal.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: In early 1996, al-Bashir authorized his Defense Minister at the time, El Fatih Erwa, to make a series of secret trips to the United States to hold talks with American officials, including officers of the CIA and United States Department of State about American sanctions policy against Sudan and what measures might be taken by the Bashir regime to remove the sanctions. Erwa was presented with a series of demands from the United States, including demands for information about Osama bin Laden and other radical Islamic groups. The US demand list also encouraged Bashir's regime to move away from activities, such as hosting the "PAIC" Islamic Conference, that impinged on Sudanese efforts to reconcile with the West. Sudan's Mukhabarat (central intelligence agency) spent half a decade amassing intelligence data on bin Laden and a wide array of Islamists through their periodic annual visits for the PAIC conferences. In May 1996, after the series of Erwa secret meetings on US soil, the Clinton Administration demanded that Sudan expel Bin Laden. Bashir complied.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: Controversy erupted about whether Sudan had offered to extradite bin Laden in return for rescinding American sanctions that were interfering with Sudan's plans to develop oil fields in southern areas of the country. American officials insisted the secret meetings were agreed only to pressure Sudan into compliance on a range of anti-terrorism issues. The Sudanese insisted that an offer to extradite bin Laden had been made in a secret one-on-one meeting at a Fairfax hotel between Erwa and the then CIA Africa Bureau chief on condition that Washington end sanctions against Bashir's regime. Amb. Timothy M. Carney attended one of the Fairfax hotel meetings. In a joint opinion piece in the Washington Post Outlook Section in 2003, Carney and Ijaz argued that in fact the Sudanese had offered to extradite bin Laden to a third country in exchange for sanctions relief.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: In August 1996, American hedge-fund manager Mansoor Ijaz traveled to the Sudan and met with senior officials including al-Turabi and al-Bashir. Ijaz asked Sudanese officials to share intelligence data with US officials on bin Laden and other Islamists who had traveled to and from the Sudan during the previous five years. Ijaz conveyed his findings to US officials upon his return, including Sandy Berger, then Clinton's deputy national security adviser, and argued for the US to constructively engage the Sudanese and other Islamic countries. In April 1997, Ijaz persuaded al-Bashir to make an unconditional offer of counterterrorism assistance in the form of a signed presidential letter that Ijaz delivered to Congressman Lee H. Hamilton by hand.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: In late September 1997, months after the Sudanese overture (made by al-Bashir in the letter to Hamilton), the U.S. State Department, under Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's directive, first announced it would return American diplomats to Khartoum to pursue counterterrorism data in the Mukhabarat's possession. Within days, the U.S. reversed that decision and imposed harsher and more comprehensive economic, trade, and financial sanctions against the Sudan, which went into effect in October 1997. In August 1998, in the wake of the East Africa embassy bombings, the U.S. launched cruise missile strikes against Khartoum. The last U.S. Ambassador to the Sudan, Ambassador Tim Carney, departed post in February 1996 and no new ambassador was designated until December 2019, when U.S. president Donald Trump's administration reached an agreement with the new Sudanese government to exchange ambassadors.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: Al-Bashir announced in August 2015 that he would travel to New York in September to speak at the United Nations. It was unclear to date if al-Bashir would have been allowed to travel, due to previous sanctions.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: The Civil war had raged between the northern and southern halves of the country for more than 19 years between the northern Arab tribes and southern African tribes, but the war soon effectively developed into a struggle between the Sudan People's Liberation Army and al-Bashir's government. The war resulted in millions of southerners being displaced, starved, and deprived of education and health care, with almost two million casualties. Because of these actions, various international sanctions were placed on Sudan. International pressure intensified in 2001, however, and leaders from the United Nations called for al-Bashir to make efforts to end the conflict and allow humanitarian and international workers to deliver relief to the southern regions of Sudan. Much progress was made throughout 2003. The peace was consolidated with the official signing by both sides of the Nairobi Comprehensive Peace Agreement 9 January 2005, granting Southern Sudan autonomy for six years, to be followed by a referendum about independence. It created a co-vice president position and allowed the north and south to split oil deposits equally, but also left both the north's and south's armies in place. John Garang, the south's peace agreement appointed co-vice president, died in a helicopter crash on 2005, three weeks after being sworn in. This resulted in riots, but the peace was eventually re-established and allowed the southerners to vote in a referendum of independence at the end of the six-year period. On 9 July 2011, following a referendum, the region of Southern Sudan separated into an independent country known as South Sudan.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: Since 1968, Sudanese politicians had attempted to create separate factions of "Africans" and "Arabs" in the western area of Darfur, a difficult task as the population were substantially intermarried and could not be distinguished by skin tone. This internal political instability was aggravated by cross-border conflicts with Chad and Libya and the 1984–85 Darfur famine. In 2003, the Justice and Equality Movement and the Sudanese Liberation Army, accusing the government of neglecting Darfur and oppressing non-Arabs in favor of Arabs, began an armed insurgency.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: Estimates vary of the number of deaths resulting from attacks on the non-Arab/Arabized population by the Janjaweed militia: the Sudanese government claim that up to 10,000 have been killed in this conflict; the United Nations reported that about 300,000 had died as of 2010, and other reports place the figures at between 200,000 and 400,000. During an interview with David Frost for the Al Jazeera English programme Frost Over The World in June 2008, al-Bashir insisted that no more than 10,000 had died in Darfur.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: The Sudanese government had been accused of suppressing information by jailing and killing witnesses since 2004, and tampering with evidence, such as covering up mass graves. The Sudanese government has also arrested and harassed journalists, thus limiting the extent of press coverage of the situation in Darfur. While the United States government has described the conflict as genocide, the UN has not recognized the conflict as such. ("see List of declarations of genocide in Darfur").


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: The United States Government stated in September 2004 "that genocide has been committed in Darfur and that the Government of Sudan and the Janjaweed bear responsibility and that genocide may still be occurring". On 29 June 2004, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell met with al-Bashir in Sudan and urged him to make peace with the rebels, end the crisis, and lift restrictions on the delivery of humanitarian aid to Darfur. Kofi Annan met with al-Bashir three days later and demanded that he disarm the Janjaweed.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: After fighting stopped in July and August, on 2006, the United Nations Security Council had approved Resolution 1706 which called for a new UN peacekeeping force consisting of 17,300 military personnel and 3,300 civilians and named the United Nations–African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID). It was intended to have supplanted or supplemented a 7,000-troop African Union Mission in Sudan peacekeeping force. Sudan strongly objected to the resolution and said that it would see the UN forces in the region as "foreign invaders". A day after rejecting the UN forces into Sudan, the Sudanese military launched a major offensive in the region. In March 2007, the United Nations Human Rights Council accused Sudan's government of taking part in "gross violations" in Darfur and urged the international community to take urgent action to protect people in Darfur. A high-level technical consultation was held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on 11– 2007, pursuant to the 2007 letters of the secretary-general and the chairperson of the African Union Commission, which were addressed to al-Bashir. The technical consultations were attended by delegations from the Government of Sudan, the African Union, and the United Nations.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: In 2009, General Martin Luther Agwai, head of the UNAMID, said the war was over in the region, although low-level disputes remained. "Banditry, localised issues, people trying to resolve issues over water and land at a local level. But real war as such, I think we are over that," he said. This perspective is contradicted by reports which indicate that violence continues in Darfur while peace efforts have been stalled repeatedly. Violence between Sudan's military and rebel fighters has beset Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile states since disputed state elections in May 2011, an ongoing humanitarian crisis that has prompted international condemnation and U.S. congressional hearings. In 2012, tensions between Sudan and South Sudan reached a boiling point when the Sudanese military bombed territory in South Sudan, leading to hostilities over the disputed Heglig (or Panthou) oil fields located along the Sudan-South Sudan border.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: Omar al-Bashir sought the assistance of numerous non-western countries after the West, led by America, imposed sanctions against him, he said: "From the first day, our policy was clear: To look eastward, toward China, Malaysia, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, and even Korea and Japan, even if the Western influence upon some [of these] countries is strong. We believe that the Chinese expansion was natural because it filled the space left by Western governments, the United States, and international funding agencies. The success of the Sudanese experiment in dealing with China without political conditions or pressures encouraged other African countries to look toward China."


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: Chadian President Idriss Deby visited Khartoum in 2010 and Chad kicked out the Darfuri rebels it had previously supported. Both Sudanese and Chadian sides together established a joint military border patrol.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: On 26 October 2011, al-Bashir said that Sudan gave military support to the Libyan rebels, who overthrew Muammar Gaddafi. In a speech broadcast live on state television, al-Bashir said the move was in response to Col Gaddafi's support for Sudanese rebels three years ago. Sudan and Libya have had a complicated and frequently antagonistic relationship for many years. President al-Bashir said the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), a Darfuri rebel group, had attacked Khartoum three years ago using Libyan trucks, equipment, arms, ammunition and money. He said God had given Sudan a chance to respond, by sending arms, ammunition and humanitarian support to the Libyan revolutionaries. "Our God, high and exalted, from above the seven skies, gave us the opportunity to reciprocate the visit," he said. "The forces which entered Tripoli, part of their arms and capabilities, were 100% Sudanese," he told the crowd. His speech was well received by a large crowd in the eastern Sudanese town of Kassala. But the easy availability of weapons in Libya, and that country's porous border with Darfur, are also of great concern to the Sudanese authorities.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: Al-Bashir in his speech said that his government's priority was to end the armed rebellion and tribal conflicts in order to save blood and direct the energies of young people towards building Sudan instead of "killing and destruction". He called upon youth of the rebel groups to lay down arms and join efforts to build the country. Al Bashir sees himself as a man wronged and misunderstood. He takes full responsibility for the conflict in Darfur, he says, but says that his government did not start the fighting and has done everything in its power to end it.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: The agreement also provided for power sharing at the national level: movements that sign the agreement will be entitled to nominate two ministers and two four ministers of state at the federal level and will be able to nominate 20 members to the national legislature. The movements will be entitled to nominate two state governors in the Darfur region.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: On 14 July 2008, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Luis Moreno Ocampo, alleged that al-Bashir bore individual criminal responsibility for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes committed since 2003 in Darfur. The prosecutor accused al-Bashir of having "masterminded and implemented" a plan to destroy the three main ethnic groups—Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa—with a campaign of murder, rape, and deportation. The arrest warrant is supported by NATO, the Genocide Intervention Network, and Amnesty International.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: An arrest warrant for al-Bashir was issued on 2009 by a Pre-Trial chamber composed of judges Akua Kuenyehia of Ghana, Anita Usacka of Latvia, and Sylvia Steiner of Brazil indicting him on five counts of crimes against humanity (murder, extermination, forcible transfer, torture and rape) and two counts of war crimes (pillaging and intentionally directing attacks against civilians). The court ruled that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute him for genocide. However, one of the three judges (Anita Usacka) wrote a dissenting opinion arguing that there were "reasonable grounds to believe that Omar Al Bashir has committed the crime of genocide".


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: Ocampo told U.S. State Department officials on 20 March 2009 that President Bashir 'needed to be isolated.' Ocampo suggested that if Bashir's stash of money were disclosed (he put the figure at possibly $9 billion), it would change Sudanese public opinion from him being a "crusader" to that of a thief.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: Sudan is not a state party to the Rome Statute establishing the ICC, and thus claims that it does not have to execute the warrant. However, United Nations Security Council Resolution 1593 (2005) referred Sudan to the ICC, which gives the court jurisdiction over international crimes committed in Sudan and obligates the State to cooperate with the ICC, and therefore the court, Amnesty International and others insist that Sudan must comply with the arrest warrant of the International Criminal Court. Amnesty International stated that al-Bashir must turn himself in to face the charges, and that the Sudanese authorities must detain him and turn him over to the ICC if he refuses.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: Al-Bashir was the first sitting head of state ever indicted by the ICC. However, the Arab League and the African Union condemned the warrant. Al-Bashir has since visited China, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Qatar and several other countries, all of which refused to arrest him and surrender him to the ICC upon arrival. ICC member state Chad also refused to arrest al-Bashir during a state visit in July 2010. Luis Moreno Ocampo and Amnesty International claimed that al-Bashir's plane could be intercepted in International Airspace. Sudan announced that the presidential plane would always be escorted by fighter jets of the Sudanese Air Force to prevent his arrest. In March 2009, just before al-Bashir's visit to Qatar, the Sudanese government was reportedly considering sending fighter jets to accompany his plane to Qatar, possibly in response to France expressing support for an operation to intercept his plane in international airspace, as France has military bases in Djibouti and the United Arab Emirates.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: The charges against al-Bashir have been criticised and ignored by interests in Sudan and abroad, particularly in Africa and the Muslim world. Former president of the African Union Muammar al-Gaddafi characterized the indictment as a form of terrorism. He also believed that the warrant is an attempt "by (the west) to recolonise their former colonies". Egypt said, it was "greatly disturbed" by the ICC decision and called for an emergency meeting of the UN security council to defer the arrest warrant. The Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa expressed that the organization emphasizes its solidarity with Sudan. The ICC warrant was condemned for "undermining the unity and stability of Sudan". The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation denounced the warrant as unwarranted and totally unacceptable. It argued that the warrant demonstrated "selectivity and double standard applied in relation to issues of war crimes". There have been large demonstrations by Sudanese people supporting President Bashir and opposing the ICC charges. Russian presidential envoy for Sudan Mikhail Margelov argued in 2009 that the warrant "sets a dangerous precedent in international relations" and "could hamper efforts to bring peace to Sudan".


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: Al-Bashir has rejected the charges, saying "Whoever has visited Darfur, met officials and discovered their ethnicities and tribes ... will know that all of these things are lies." He described the charges as "not worth the ink they are written in". The warrant will be delivered to the Sudanese government, which has stated that it will not carry it out.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: The Sudanese government retaliated against the warrant by expelling a number of international aid agencies, including Oxfam and Mercy Corps. President Bashir described the aid agencies as thieves who take "99 percent of the budget for humanitarian work themselves, giving the people of Darfur 1 percent" and as spies in the work of foreign regimes. Bashir promised that national agencies will provide aid to Darfur.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: During a visit to Egypt, al-Bashir was not arrested, leading to condemnation by Amnesty International. In October 2009, al-Bashir was invited to Uganda by President Yoweri Museveni for an African Union meeting in Kampala, but did not attend after protest by several NGOs. On 23 October 2009, al-Bashir was invited to Nigeria by President Umaru Yar'Adua for another AU meeting, and was not arrested. In November, he was invited to Turkey for an OIC meeting. Later, he was invited to Denmark to attend conferences on climate change in Copenhagen.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: Al-Bashir was one of the candidates in the 2010 Sudanese presidential election, the first democratic election with multiple political parties participating in decades. It had been suggested that by holding and winning a legitimate presidential elections in 2010, al-Bashir had hoped to evade the ICC's warrant for his arrest. On 26 April, he was officially declared the winner after Sudan's election commission announced he had received 68% of the votes cast in the election. However, "The New York Times" noted the voting was "marred by boycotts and reports of intimidation and widespread fraud".


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: Al-Bashir visited Kenya on 27 August 2010 to witness the president signing Kenya's new constitution into law. In May 2011, al-Bashir visited Djibouti to attend the inauguration of President Ismail Omar Guelleh's third term. In June of the same year, China's president Hu received al-Bashir as "friend and brother" in Beijing, fostering China's interests in Sudan's resources. Al-Bashir was received in Libya along with a high-level delegation in January 2012 in a bid to restore friendly relations and offer support to the new Libyan government after the fall of Gaddafi.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: In July 2013, Omar al-Bashir arrived in Nigeria for an African Union summit only to leave the country less than 24 hours later amid calls for his arrest. In August 2013, Bashir's plane was blocked from entering Saudi Arabian airspace when Bashir was attempting to attend the inauguration of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, whose country is the main supplier of weapons to Sudan.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: A second arrest warrant for President al-Bashir was later issued on 12 July 2010. The ICC issued an additional warrant adding 3 counts of genocide for the ethnic cleansing of the Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa tribes. The new warrant included the court's conclusion that there were reasonable grounds to suspect that (Omar al-Bashir) acted with specific intent to destroy in part the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups in the troubled Darfur region. The charges against al-Bashir, in three separate counts, include "genocide by killing", "genocide by causing serious bodily or mental harm" and "genocide by deliberately inflicting on each target group conditions of life calculated to bring about the group's physical destruction". The new warrant will act as a supplement to the first, whereby the charges initially brought against al-Bashir will all remain in place, but will now include the crime of genocide which was ruled out initially, pending appeal.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: On 28 August 2010 in Nairobi, the authorities in Kenya chose not to arrest al-Bashir on International Criminal Court (ICC) charges of genocide when he arrived for a ceremony for the new Kenyan constitution. Al-Bashir was escorted into Nairobi's Uhuru Park, where the signing ceremony was taking place, by Tourism minister Najib Balala. On 28 November 2011, Kenya's High Court Judge Nicholas Ombija ordered the Minister of Internal Security to arrest al-Bashir, "should he set foot in Kenya in the future".


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: Additionally, Chad and Djibouti continued to allow Bashir to travel freely into their country despite being parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: Al-Bashir said that Sudan is not a party to the ICC treaty and could not be expected to abide by its provisions just like the United States, China and Russia. He said "It is a political issue and double standards, because there are obvious crimes like Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan, but [they] did not find their way to the International Criminal Court". He added "The same decision in which [the] Darfur case [was] being transferred to the court stated that the American soldiers [in Iraq and Afghanistan] would not be questioned by the court, so it is not about justice, it is a political issue." Al Bashir accused Luis Moreno Ocampo, the ICC's chief prosecutor since 2003, of repeatedly lying in order to damage his reputation and standing. Al-Bashir said "The behaviour of the prosecutor of the court, it was clearly the behaviour of a political activist not a legal professional. He is now working on a big campaign to add more lies." He added, "The biggest lie was when he said I have $9bn in one of the British banks, and thank God, the British bank and the [British] finance minister … denied these allegations." He also said: "The clearest cases in the world such as Palestine and Iraq and Afghanistan, clear crimes to the whole humanity – all were not transferred to the court."


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: In October 2013, several members of the African Union expressed anger at the ICC, calling it "racist" for failing to file charges against Western leaders or Western allies while prosecuting only African suspects so far. The African Union demanded that the ICC protect African heads of state from prosecution.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: In June 2015, while in South Africa for an African Union meeting, al-Bashir was prohibited from leaving that country while a court decided whether he should be handed over to the ICC for war crimes. He, nevertheless, was allowed to leave South Africa soon afterward.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: In October 2015, he traveled to India to attend the India–Africa Summit and there were calls for his arrest by Amnesty International, but since India is not a signatory of the Rome Statute, the ICC does not have jurisdiction in India. During an interview, while in India, he stated that nothing could prevent him from going to South Africa again in December.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: In 2015, Sudan participated in the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen against the Shia Houthis and forces loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was deposed in the 2011 uprising. Reuters reported, "The war in Yemen has given Omar Hassan al-Bashir, a skilled political operator who has ruled Sudan for a quarter-century, an opportunity to show wealthy Sunni powers that he can be an asset against Iranian influence – if the price is right."


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: Al-Bashir's long career has been riddled with war. Despite his pledge to end the 21-year civil war that had been carrying on when he took office in 1989, further conflict continued after that he prolonged. During the frequent fighting, Al-Bashir allegedly looted the impoverished nation of much of its wealth. According to leaked US diplomatic cables, $9 billion of his siphoned wealth was stashed in London banks. Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the chief prosecutor, stated that some of the funds were being held in the partially nationalized Lloyds Banking Group. He also reportedly told US officials it was necessary to go public with the scale of Al-Bashir's extortion to turn public opinion against him.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: "Ocampo suggested if Bashir's stash of money were disclosed (he put the figure at $9bn), it would change Sudanese public opinion from him being a 'crusader' to that of a thief," one US official stated. "Ocampo reported Lloyds bank in London may be holding or knowledgeable of the whereabouts of his money," the report says. "Ocampo suggested exposing Bashir had illegal accounts would be enough to turn the Sudanese against him." A leak from WikiLeaks allegedly reveals that the Sudanese president had embezzled US$9 billion in state funds, but Lloyds Bank of England "insisted it was not aware of any link with Bashir," while a Sudanese government spokesman called the claim "ludicrous" and attacked the motives of the prosecutor. In an interview with the Guardian, al-Bashir said, referring to ICC Prosecutor Ocampo, "The biggest lie was when he said I have $9 billion in one of the British banks, and thank God, the British bank and the [British] finance minister ... denied these allegations." The arrest warrant actively increased public support for al-Bashir in Sudan.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: Part of the the BNP Paribas paid for sanctions violations was related to their trade with Sudan. While smaller fines have also been given to other banks, US Justice Department officials said that they found the BNP particularly uncooperative, calling it Sudan's "de facto" central bank.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: In 2012, al-Bashir proposed setting up a continent wide space agency in Africa. In a statement he said; "I'm calling for the biggest project, an African space agency. Africa must have its space agency... [It] will liberate Africa from technological domination". This followed previous calls in 2010 by the African Union (AU) to conduct a feasibility study that would draw up a "road map for the creation of the African space agency". African astronomy received a massive boost when South Africa was awarded the majority shares of the Square Kilometre Array, the world's biggest radio telescope. It will see dishes erected in nine African countries. But skeptics have questioned whether a continental body in the style of NASA or the European Space Agency would be affordable.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: On 11 April 2019, al-Bashir was removed from his post by the Sudanese Armed Forces after many months of protests and civil uprisings. He was immediately placed under house arrest pending the formation of a transitional council. At the time of his arrest al-Bashir had ruled Sudan longer than any other leader since the country gained independence in 1956, and was the longest-ruling president of the Arab League. The army also ordered the arrest of all ministers of al-Bashir's cabinet, dissolved the National Legislature and formed a Transitional Military Council, led by his own First Vice President and Defense Minister, Lieutenant General Ahmed Awad Ibn Auf.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: On 17 April 2019, al-Bashir was moved from house arrest to Khartoum's Kobar Prison. On 13 May 2019, prosecutors charged al-Bashir with "inciting and participating in" the killing of protesters. A trial for corruption (after $130 million was found in his home) and money laundering against al-Bashir started during the following months. On 14 December 2019, he was convicted for money laundering and corruption. He was sentenced to two years in prison.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: On 21 July 2020, his trial regarding the coup that brought him to power started. About 20 military personnel were indicted for their roles in the coup.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: On 5 November 2019, the Forces of Freedom and Change alliance (FFC), which holds indirect political power during the 39-month Sudanese transition to democracy, stated that it had reached a consensus decision in favour of transferring al-Bashir to the ICC after the completion of his corruption and money laundering trial. In the following days, Sudanese transition period Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok and Sovereignty Council member Siddiq Tawer stated that al-Bashir would be transferred to the ICC. On 11 February 2020, Sudan's ruling military council agreed to hand over the ousted al-Bashir to the ICC in The Hague to face charges of crimes against humanity in Darfur. In October 2020, ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and a delegation arrived in Sudan to discuss with the government about Bashir's indictment. In a deal with Darfurian rebels, the government agreed to set up a special war crimes court that would include Bashir.


title: Omar al-Bashir

text: On 21 September 2021, the government in Sudan accused loyalists of Bashir of a thwarted attempted coup d'état. Sources close to the government said that the instigators were arrested and were being interrogated.


title: Metrosexual

text: Metrosexual is a portmanteau of "metropolitan" and "sexual" coined in 1994, describing a man of ambiguous sexuality, (especially one living in an urban, post-industrial, capitalist culture) who is especially meticulous about his grooming and appearance, typically spending a significant amount of time and money on shopping as part of this.


title: Metrosexual

text: The term "metrosexual" originated in an article by Mark Simpson published on November 15, 1994, in "The Independent". Simpson wrote:


title: Metrosexual

text: However, it was not until the early 2000s when Simpson returned to the subject that the term became globally popular. In 2002, Salon.com published an article by Simpson, which described David Beckham as "the biggest metrosexual in Britain" and offered this updated definition:


title: Metrosexual

text: The advertising agency Euro RSCG Worldwide adopted the term shortly thereafter for a marketing study. Sydney's daily newspaper, "The Sydney Morning Herald", ran a major feature in March 2003 titled "The Rise of the Metrosexual" (also syndicated in its sister paper "The Age"). A couple of months later, "The New York Times"' Sunday Styles section ran a story, "Metrosexuals Come Out". The term and its connotations continued to roll steadily into more news outlets around the world.


title: Metrosexual

text: Though it did represent a complex and gradual change in the shopping and self-presentation habits of both men and women, the idea of metrosexuality was often distilled in the media down to a few men and a short checklist of vanities, like skin care products, scented candles and costly, colorful dress shirts and pricey designer jeans. It was this image of the metrosexual—that of a straight young man who got pedicures and facials, practiced aromatherapy and spent freely on clothes—that contributed to a backlash against the term from men who merely wanted to feel free to take more care with their appearance than had been the norm in the 1990s, when companies abandoned dress codes, Dockers khakis became a popular brand, and XL, or extra-large, became the one size that fit all.


title: Metrosexual

text: A "60 Minutes" story on 1960s–70s pro footballer Joe Namath suggested he was "perhaps, America's first metrosexual" after filming his most famous ad sporting Beautymist pantyhose.


title: Metrosexual

text: When the word first became popular, various sources attributed its origin to trendspotter Marian Salzman, but Salzman has credited Simpson as the original source for her usage of the word.


title: Metrosexual

text: Over the course of the following years, other terms countering or substituting for "metrosexual" appeared. Perhaps the most widely used was "retrosexual", which in its anti- or pre-metrosexual sense was also first used by Simpson. However, in later years, the term was used by some to describe men who subscribed to what they affected to be the grooming and dress standards of a previous era, such as the handsome, impeccably turned-out fictional character of Donald Draper in the television series "Mad Men", itself set in an idealised version of the early 1960s New York advertising world.