Muammar Qadhafi caused great suffering among the Sudanese people, Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir said Saturday on his first visit to Libya since Qadhafi was overthrown and killed. Wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on charges of genocide and war crimes in Sudan's war-torn Darfur region, Bashir said that after Libya, Qadhafi inflicted the most damage in Sudan, the official WAL news agency reported.
"We all suffered from the old regime... We (the Sudanese) were the second to have suffered the most, after the Libyan people," Bashir told the news agency. Upon arrival in Tripoli, the Sudanese leader was met by Libya's Mustafa Abdel Jalil, the head of the National Transitional Council (NTC), and members of the interim government, an AFP photographer reported.
Bashir, who claims that Sudan provided weapons to help oust Qadhafi, said the visit felt "like it was the first time," adding that he came to underline Sudan's support for the Libyan people and the country's new government that took charge after Qadhafi's four-decade dictatorship fell.
Khartoum's relationship with Qadhafi's Libya was uneasy. The former Libyan leader poured arms across the border into Darfur and long sought greater influence in Sudan's ravaged western region. Bashir has claimed that a deadly 2008 attack on Khartoum by the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), the most heavily-armed Darfur rebel group, was financed by the Libyan government and fought with Libyan weapons.
In 2010, Qadhafi's regime offered sanctuary to JEM leader Khalil Ibrahim, who was killed in Sudan last month after his return to the country. During his two-day visit, Bashir will hold talks with the NTC on "issues of mutual interest", Sudan's official SUNA news agency reported earlier Saturday.