Sudan officials blame opposition as more arms found after foiled ‘coup’
KHARTOUM, Sept 27 (AFP) — Sudanese security authorities have found a new weapons cache near Khartoum and blamed Hassan al-Turabi’s opposition Popular Congress party for hiding the arms, which were to be used in a coup, media reports said Monday.
Dozens of members of Turabi’s party have been arrested, the reports said.
In its early morning bulletin, Omdurman radio said weapons and ammunition including Kalashnikov rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and hand grenades were found in a pre-dawn raid Monday in a house in the Marzouq suburb of Omdurman, on the opposite banks of the Nile River to Khartoum, the capital.
Interior Minister Abdel Rahim Moohamed Hussein, accompanied by senior army, police and security officers and a senior prosecutor, rushed to the scene to watch the latest arms cache being hauled out, the radio said.
Four men living in the house were arrested, said the report which was also carried by dailies Al Rai Al Aam and Akhbar Al Youm.
The seizure was the fifth since Friday, when the authorities said they had thwarted a coup bid led by Turabi’s party.
The opposition has dismissed the government’s claims of a coup plot, saying they were a ploy to divert attention from the crisis in the western region of Darfur and an excuse to crush the banned Popular Congress party.
According to the United Nations, some 50,000 people have been killed in Darfur during a 19-month-old rebellion, and more than one million made homeless. The crisis has brought UN Security Council demands that Khartoum act to rein in the killings, blamed by Western leaders largely on the Janjaweed militia, supported by Khartoum forces.
Prosecutor Mohamed Farid Ahmed said in an interview given to Akhbar Al Youm at the scene of the latest arms seizure that the weapons seized so far were enough to equip “a complete army”.
Fifty people have been arrested so far on suspicion they were involved with the weapons caches, and scores more suspects were in custody accused over the alleged coup, he added.
“All suspects admitted in the preliminary interrogation that they belong to the Popular Congress,” said the prosecutor, adding some detainees had confessed the weapons had been brought into Sudan from Eritrea along smugglers’ routes.
Ahmed said confessions also revealed the plot had envisaged four hours of street fighting in Khartoum “before the arrival of supplies from the east”, but did not elaborate.
He said the coup plot also included setting off car bombs in different parts of the capital, including near several government ministry buildings.
Akhbar Al Youm quoted Major General Hussein as saying the plotters were planning to fight battles “in every quarter of the capital in order to scatter the government efforts and to find their way to military positions.”
He accused the Popular Congress of planning to “transfer the sedition from Darfur to Khartoum”, warning there are more weapons caches in the capital and calling upon civilians to be cautious.
He also congratulated the security forces for unearthing the five weapons caches found so far.
“The security authorities have displayed a high competence that helped in warding off the evils of the saboteurs,” he said.