Sudan steps up campaign against Islamists, under fire from rights groups

By Mohamed Ali Saeed

KHARTOUM, April 2 (AFP) — Sudanese authorities Friday stepped up their campaign against the Islamist opposition Popular Congress, as they came under more fire from human rights defenders over the battle against rebels in the west of the country.

Sudan’s ruling National Congress (NC) party accused the PC of planning attacks and assassinations with the help of renegade military officers and using air force aircraft.

Official Omdurman radio repeatedly broadcast an NC statement, also carried by Khartoum dailies, directed at the PC of Hassan al-Turabi, who was arrested on Wednesday along with other party officials.

On Thursday, the authorities charged Turabi with damaging the country’s security, and suspended the activities of his party, following claims that a coup attempt linked to the Darfur rebellion had been thwarted.

The ruling party accused the PC of plotting “criminal acts of sabotage” through political and military figures, “led by a colonel from the air force.”

The aim was to “blow up landmark strategic national institutions, including the Al-Jaily refinery, Qarry power station, the armed forces headquarters and Giad Industrial City, using the air force” planes, it alleged.

The statement, reported to have been issued after a lengthy meeting of the ruling party, also said “high-ranking” personalities in the government and society had been marked for assassination or kidnap.

It said this “would have created widespread chaos resulting in general disorder and panic, instability and insecurity of the people and the country, if not for God’s mercy and the vigilance of the military and security organs.”

The NC said confessions by the suspects would soon be made public to the people of Sudan and to the world.

It called on Sudanese to maintain “vigilance and readiness in protection of your safety and the security of your installations and maintenance of the unity of your country which is on the threshold of achieving peace, the greatest accomplishment since independence.”

Interior Minister Abdel Rahim Mohamed Husseinin told the independent Al-Sahafa daily Thursday Turabi would stand trial on charges of “instigating tribal and regional sedition and harming security.”

Turabi, 72, faces up to 10 years in jail if convicted.

A former leading light of President Omar al-Beshir’s regime, he was freed in October 2003 after spending nearly three years under house arrest.

The latest moves follow the arrest Sunday of several army officers on suspicion of involvement in a military coup attempt apparently related to the conflict in the Darfur region.

Turabi said Tuesday the government had accused the PC of supporting the year-old rebellion among Darfur’s indigenous non-Arab minorities. He denied the allegation, although he has criticised government policy in the region.

Indirect negotiations began Wednesday in neighbouring Chad between the government and Darfur’s rebel Sudan Liberation Movement and Movement for Justice and Equality.

But Chadian mediators on Thursday failed to convince the two sides to meet face-to-face.

UN officials have branded the Darfur war as currently the “world’s greatest humanitarian and human rights catastrophe”. It erupted in February 2003, amid protests from rebels that their region has been marginalised.

UN emergency relief officer Daniel Augstburger told journalists in Geneva Thursday of widespread atrocities by government-backed militia who are forcing hundreds of thousands of people from their homes.

Augstburger said that during a six-week mission “we witnessed rape, gang rape, systematic looting, destruction of villages and a policy which forces this population to move out”.

“The human rights situation… is such a serious issue that it even brings into question the whole of the humanitarian operation,” Augstburger added.

The UN’s top humanitarian official is due to brief the UN Security Council on the situation in Darfur on Friday.

Meanwhile New York-based Human Rights Watch accused Sudan Friday of supporting “massive human rights violations” by militias and urged Khartoum to disarm and disband them.

The Sudanese government, which is in the process of sealing a deal to end the long-running civil war in the south of the country, denies the allegations.