Sudan arrests officers planning coup, says official
By Nima Elbagir
KHARTOUM, March 29 (Reuters) – Sudanese security forces have arrested 10 military officers who were plotting to overthrow the government, a high-ranking military official said on Monday.
The official, who asked not to be named, told Reuters the officers were arrested on Sunday and were mostly from war-torn western Sudan. He said they all had sympathies to the opposition Popular Congress party, led by Islamist leader Hassan al-Turabi.
“There are 10, all of officer rank, under the leadership of a colonel… It was an attempt at a coup d’etat,” the military official said, adding that the group had been caught meeting in a military headquarters in Khartoum.
Turabi denied his party was involved in a coup bid but said his sources had told him around 27 officers had been arrested. The opposition leader is a former ally of Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who seized power in a 1989 military coup.
An Interior Ministry official had no comment on the report. Amid rumours of arrests, local press sources said they had been told by security not to publish anything on the issue.
The military official said nine officers were from Darfur in west Sudan where the government has been fighting rebels for more than a year. The government has said major conflict in the area is over, but witnesses say government planes have bombed the area in recent weeks.
“The fact that five of the officers implicated were from the air force has very far reaching consequences because of the government’s reliance on aerial bombardment in its war against the rebels in Darfur,” the military official said.
Turabi was detained in 2001 after a power struggle with Bashir and released from house arrest in October. He said while his Popular Congress party was not involved in any coup attempt he supported the charges by the western rebels who say their region has been neglected by the central government.
“It’s not only a purge. It is going to be a charge of attempted coup d’etat,” he told Reuters by telephone in Cairo about those officers arrested. He also said the officers were from the Darfur region, nearby Kordofan and other areas.
In addition, Turabi said five senior members of his party had been detained on Monday, with the first arrests made in the early morning. But he said it was not clear whether they would be kept for questioning of a few hours or held longer.
Another party official said a further seven activists had been arrested. (Additional reporting by Edmund Blair in Cairo)