The coup was staged by a group of military officers and led by the Defense Minister and Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief, Field Marshal Abdel Rahman Swar al-Dahab, against the government of President Gaafar Nimeiry.

[1][2][3] In 1983, President Gaafar Nimeiry declared all Sudan an Islamic state under Sharia law, including the non-Islamic majority southern part of the country.

The Southern Sudan Autonomous Region was abolished on 5 June 1983, terminating the Addis Ababa Agreement of 1972, which ended the First Sudanese Civil War.

[8] The Sudanese Armed Forces took control of the country on 6 April 1985 after more than a week of civil unrest, caused by increasing food prices and growing dissatisfaction with the government of President Nimeiry, who himself came to power in the 1969 coup d'état.

[1] In the same communique, Dahab also promised the opening of a "direct dialogue" with the rebels in the south (predominantly Christian and animist), and the achievement of national unity "within the framework of equality in rights and duties".

Initially intending to try to return to Khartoum, Nimeiry had been dissuaded from doing that by the pilot of his Boeing 707 presidential jet and by Mubarak, on the grounds that the trip would be too dangerous.