Crowds cheer released Turabi as he hails Sudan peace moves

KHARTOUM, Oct. 13, 2003 (dpa) — Sudanese Islamist leader Hassan Abdalla Turabi, greeted by hundreds of thousands of supporters following his release from two years’ detention, hailed the country’s peace process Monday.

President Omar Hassan el-Bashir had ordered his release along with that of all political detainees held captive for the last two years in a presidential decree also lifting a ban on the political activities of Turabi’s Popular National Congress (PNC).

The party announced it would hold a mass rally Tuesday after Turabi went straight from his release from house arrest in the Kafour area to the headquarters in El Riyadh suburb of the party he established in 2000 following the dispute with el-Bashir.

Turabi affirmed his support for the ongoing peace processes to end war between the animist South and Islamic North, saying he believed in dialogue as “a religious value”.

Welcomed by followers who poured into his residence situated in Khartoum’s wealthy Manchia suburb, Turabi said his dispute with the government was over a lack of freedoms.

However, he said, now that the government had realized dialogue was good therw would be no problem at all, Turabi told journalists. His release was the result of a “balance of power”, and “therefore there will be no dispute at all between me and the government”.

Turabi was imprisoned in February 2001 after president el-Bashir removed him from office as Speaker of the parliament. He was detained with with Yousif Nagaesh and Gabreil Hassan, his close aides.

Presidential peace advisor Ghazi Salah el Din commented that the release of Turabi ws a great step in the peace processes, as it also constitutes a sole guarantee in national consensus.

Not only northern Sudanese but also southerners – despite their sharp diferences with Turabi on implementation of Islamic Sharia law in 1983 – praised his release as sign of improved human rights.

Sudan’s official SUNA news agency earlier cited the release decree as saying that the release would mark a new era in Sudan’s political history and build a healthy political atmosphere.

The president hoped that by releasing the Islamist ideologist the country would enter a new phase of building an appropriate political atmosphere, free from diseases of the past.

Sudan, in August, promised to free all political detainees as part of peace talks with the southern rebels