Sudan accuses Eritrea of backing alleged plot
KHARTOUM, Sudan, Sep 09, 2004 (AP) — Sudan has accused Eritrea of backing what it called a foiled plot against its government, newspapers reported Thursday.
Sudan and Eritrea have long have traded accusations of supporting each other’s rebels.
Sudan’s security authority had issued a statement Wednesday saying it had arrested a number of members of the opposition party led by the president’s former mentor, Hassan Turabi, and accused them of preparing inside Sudan and in an unnamed neighboring country for a “sabotage plot.”
Gen. Mohamed Atta, deputy chief of Sudan’s Security and Intelligence Bureau, offered more details on the alleged plot in a meeting late Wednesday with top editors of local newspapers, the newspapers reported Thursday.
Al-Sahafa daily quoted Atta accusing “Eritrea of providing arms to carry out (the group’s) plans, for which it recruited retired officers and privates and made contacts with police and security members active in service, but they failed to make any infiltration in the army.”
Atta also was quoted as saying more than 30 members of Turabi’s Popular Congress had been arrested and accused of planning to commit acts of subversion and to try to free Turabi. Turabi, his country’s one-time chief Islamic ideologue, has been detained since April, when he and 70 others were detained on suspicion of subversion.
The Popular Congress accused authorities of orchestrating the coup plot as a pretext to arrest its members following the party’s leadership recent rebuke of a government offer to hold walks regarding national reconciliation and the Darfur conflict.
A statement released by the group said government officials last month visited Turabi while he was in hospital to ask him to remain silent, remain under house arrest or be jailed, but the party leader refused all the government’s advances. He was subsequently detained in a maximum security prison.
“This decision (by Turabi) made the government furious and it wanted revenge,” according to the statement.
It also said el-Bashir’s government is “living in horror and fear” of the threat of sanctions being imposed against it by the United Nations or the European Union “because of their failure to find a solution to the Darfur question.”
According to the statement, police raided party members’ homes early Wednesday and hauled many away to Copper Prison in Khartoum. Among those detained were “some who had been released only a few weeks ago after spending months in jail under the pretext of involvement in another coup.”
While the government declared the plot foiled, security was tight Thursday, with witnesses reporting troops searching cars in a number of places in the capital and the surrounding area.
Turabi was considered the power and the brains behind the Islamic fundamentalist government set up after President Omar el-Bashir seized power in a military coup 1989. He and el-Bashir had a falling out in 1999 after the president accused Turabi, then speaker of parliament, of trying to grab power and stripped him of his position.
Turabi subsequently spent two years under house arrest after his party signed a peace accord with the main southern rebel group, Sudan People’s Liberation Army. The government also has accused Turabi of fomenting trouble in the western region of Darfur.