Sudanese officers arrested for coup attempt
KHARTOUM, March 30 (AFP) — Some 10 Sudanese army officers have been arrested on suspicion of involvement in a military coup attempt apparently related to the ongoing conflict in west Sudan’s Darfur region, an official close to the government said.
“It is true that 10 or 11 officers of the armed forces have been arrested on suspicion of involvement in an attempted military coup d’etat,” the official, who declined to be identified, told AFP.
The source refused to give further details or identify the officers involved, though an official statement was expected later.
The officers arrested were thought to belong to the Islamist opposition Popular Congress (PC), which said Monday that there had been a government crackdown on senior party officials following allegations of a coup attempt from within the army.
PC deputy leader Abdullah Hassan Ahmed was summoned by security police on Sunday night and told some civilians also took part in the alleged coup attempt, a party statement said.
The authorities then launched a wave of arrests against party officials and axed or transferred a raft of officers in the army, police and security services who originated from Darfur, it said.
The accusations of Darfuri involvement in a coup attempt were a pretext for “a crushing military campaign against the people of Darfur,” the party said.
Earlier the Popular Congress’s leader, Hassan al-Turabi, told AFP that six party officials, including three politburo members, had been detained.
He linked the crackdown to government charges that his party supported the year-old rebel movement among Darfur’s indigenous non-Arab minorities, an allegation he vigorously denied.
The questioning of his deputy on Sunday evening had centred on the uprising, Turabi said.
News of the political upheaval came as talks between a government delegation and rebels were due to open later Tuesday in the Chadian capital Ndjamena.
The delegation leader, Investment Minister Al-Sherif Ahmed Omar Badr, told reporters that the meeting would pave the way for a comprehensive conference on peace, development and coexistence presently being prepared for but no date or venue has yet been set for it.
The Darfur conflict erupted in February 2003 between the government and rebels, who complain their region is marginalised. More than 10,000 people have been killed in the fighting, and an estimated 670,000 have been forced from their homes, many seeking refuge in neighbouring Chad.
The UN humanitarian coordinator for Sudan, Mukesh Kapila, earlier this month described the conflict as “the world’s greatest humanitarian and human rights catastrophe”.
Kapila said most of the atrocities were being carried out by government-linked militia groups fighting the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM).
Experts of the UN Commission on Human Rights said in a statement sent to AFP in Nairobi on Monday also expressed concern over “systematic” human rights abuses in the Darfur region and demanded punishment for those responsible.
The conflict has intensified just as the Khartoum government and the country’s main rebel group, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, are finalising a deal to end Sudan’s wider civil war, which began in 1983.