Khartoum: A court in Sudan has sentenced 18 rebel leaders to death for murder, including the head of a delegation in talks with the Sudanese government.
State radio reported on Friday that a court sentenced former governor of the southern Blue Nile State and leader of the opposition group Sudan People`s Liberation Movement-North Malik Agar and 17 other members of the group to death by hanging.
Forty-seven others were given life sentences in a hearing yesterday. All but one were tried in absentia.
Sudan resumed talks with rebels last month. The rebel coalition was part of the South Sudanese rebel army, the Sudan People`s Liberation Army, until South Sudan seceded from the north in 2011. Since then, the coalition has been banned in Sudan, but wages an active insurgency in its south.
