Verdict in Sudan ‘coup plot’ trial set for Saturday

KHARTOUM, May 8 (AFP) — A Sudanese special tribunal announced it would deliver its verdict next Saturday in the case of 72 people accused of involvement in an alleged coup plot last year.

Sudanese army soldiers escorting another truck full of prisoners, through the streets of central Khartoum in Sudan, Sep. 30, 2004. (AP) .

The defendants made no closing statement at Sunday’s hearing — their lawyers had pulled out earlier in the trial in protest at the judge’s refusal to accept their request to sub-poena senior officials as witnesses.

Instead they submitted a request to the judiciary for the dismissal of presiding judge Al-Amin al-Tayeb al-Beshir, charging that his handling of their case had been partial.

Most of the accused have made little secret of their sympathy for detained Islamist opposition leader Hassan al-Turabi.

Chants of: “The government is a hireling and must be changed,” and: “It is jihad (holy war) for God …. not for authority or dignity,” rang out from the dock during Sunday’s hearing.

But the military-backed regime’s announcement of a coup plot last September met with widespread scepticism.

The opposition charged that the allegation was an attempt by the government to distract attention from its troubles with the international community over the civil war in Darfur.

Twenty Sudanese, most of them army officers, were already sentenced last month to prison terms ranging from five to 15 years in a connected trial.