Coup Atlas Research Database
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62503291990ConspiracyMilitary coup

Sudan, 1990 — military coup conspiracy

Sudan (SDN)North Africa, AfricaMarch 29, 1990

Event Summary

This entry is coded 29 March 1990, during the intense conspiracy and purge climate in the first year of Lieutenant General Omar al-Bashir's National Salvation Revolution regime in Sudan, weeks before the well-documented Ramadan coup attempt of 23 April 1990. Bashir had seized power on 30 June 1989 in a coup masterminded by the National Islamic Front and its ideologue Hassan al-Turabi, and his Revolutionary Command Council quickly banned all political parties and trade unions, detained hundreds of politicians and unionists, and moved to purge the regular army, which the Islamists distrusted as too secular and professional. Tens of thousands of individuals were eventually removed from the army, police, and civil administration to ensure loyalty, and the regime built the Popular Defence Forces as an ideological counterweight while escalating the war against the Sudan People's Liberation Army.

In this atmosphere of repeated real and alleged plots, the 29 March 1990 coding sits in the pre-Ramadan-coup period of officer disaffection and conspiracy against the new junta, shortly before the 23 April 1990 attempt that led to the summary execution of 28 officers.

Researched Details

Researched

Independent research, added record by record. Hover any label for what it means.

Target identified in Coup Atlas research: Bashir survived the 1990 plotting and ruled Sudan for 30 years until his 2019 overthrow
RESEARCHED NAME
Key figures
Lieutenant General Omar al-Bashir (target)
disaffected regular-army officers
Hassan al-Turabi and the National Islamic Front

Sources

Immediately after taking power in the 1989 coup, Bashir moved to consolidate an Islamist wing within the armed forces and was compelled to purge numerous officers with ideological or professional opposition to his rule, particularly Ba'athists, leftists, and technocratic officers.
SOURCE REVIEWED Sawab Center: Return of Extremism, Shadow Actors in Sudan's War open source ↗
More than 78,000 individuals were purged from the army, police, and civil administration to ensure absolute loyalty to the Islamist project, and the government established the Popular Defence Forces as a parallel ideological militia to protect the regime from internal dissent.
SOURCE REVIEWED Wikipedia: 1989 Sudanese coup d'etat open source ↗
Immediately after the June 1989 coup several hundred politicians, trade unionists, lawyers, journalists, and businessmen were detained and all nonreligious organizations dissolved, as the government stepped up its assault on the trade-union movement.
SOURCE REVIEWED Human Rights Watch World Report 1990: Sudan open source ↗
The 1990 coup attempt against Bashir came just months after he overthrew the democratically elected government of Sadiq al-Mahdi in 1989, and the officers arrested as its leaders were executed only 24 hours after their arrest.
SOURCE REVIEWED Arab News: Families seek justice for Sudan's slain anti-Bashir coup plotters open source ↗

Editorial Note

No discrete plot is precisely dated 29 Mar 1990 in the sources located this session; the well-documented adjacent event is the 23 Apr 1990 Ramadan coup. The coding sits in the pre-Ramadan-coup conspiracy and purge climate of Bashir's first year. Context with strong framing. First of two Sudan records in this batch.

Cross-Reference

Only one dataset carries it. One of the three reference datasets we check against carries this event; the others do not list it. That is not a contradiction — the datasets cover different periods and use different thresholds — but it means the record has had less outside corroboration.

Identifiers for finding this same event in the other datasets:

Cline Center id
62503291990

How the match is made is described in crossref-report.md.

Outcome and Target

Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: Bashir survived the 1990 plotting and ruled Sudan for 30 years until his 2019 overthrow.

Baseline coding: Plot discovered and disrupted before execution. Recorded leader fate: remained in office; not physically harmed. The baseline file does not name individual targets; researched names are kept in a separate layer.

Baseline Dataset Citation

Cline Center Coup d’État Project Dataset, v2.2.2
Peyton, Buddy, Joseph Bajjalieh, Michael Martin, and Andrea Gerald. 2026. Cline Center Coup d’État Project Dataset. Cline Center for Advanced Social Research. V.2.2.2. February 17. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. doi: 10.13012/B2IDB-9651987_V10
⚑ This citation establishes the coded baseline record; use the claim-level sources above for the researched narrative.

Baseline Source-Document Entries

Wall Street Journal

“World-Wide [3],” April 25, 1990

Globe and Mail

“Plot to stage coup thwarted, Sudan says,” March 29, 1990

Chicago Tribune

“Sudan junta quashes uprising by officers,” April 24, 1990

This is the citation trail carried by the baseline dataset, grouped by outlet and rejoined from the line-wrapped original. Coup Atlas has not independently re-checked every document; read the original before citing a specific claim. URLs the import damaged beyond safe repair are shown as plain text and listed in citations-report.md. How this list is built →

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