Sudanese opposition leader Hassan al-Turabi arrested
KHARTOUM, March 31 (AFP) — Sudanese authorities arrested Islamist opposition leader Hassan al-Turabi at his home, shortly after accusing officers of trying to mount a coup, his wife Wissal al-Mehdi told AFP.
A government spokesman later said Turabi had been arrested for inciting regionalism and tribalism among the people of west Sudan, where a fresh rebellion broke out last year.
Some 60 uniformed and plainclothes security agents surrounded the home of the 72-year-old chief of the Popular Congress party at around 1:20 a.m. (0020 GMT), while he was asleep, Mehdi said.
“One of the officers then entered the house and informed him that he was under arrest,” she added.
She said Turabi had been taken to security headquarters and then to Khartoum’s Kober prison, where his family had been allowed to bring him breakfast.
A former leading light of Omar al-Beshir’s regime, Turabi had been freed in October 2003 after spending nearly three years under house arrest.
Information Minister Al-Zahawe Ibrahim Malik later told state television after a cabinet meeting that Turabi was arrested for making statements in which he “incited regionalist and tribalist tendencies” against the government.
The move came after the arrest Sunday of a number of Sudanese army officers on suspicion of involvement in a military coup attempt apparently related to the ongoing conflict in west Sudan’s Darfur region.
The officers arrested were thought to belong to the 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.
Turabi’s son Issameddin al-Turabi told AFP: “The government is inventing allegations and wants to link Hassan al-Turabi to a pretended coup attempt because my father is the only opposition figure inside the country and the authorities cannot tolerate that.”
He said the government had drawn up a list of 40 party officials, had arrested some and were looking for the rest.
He charged that more than 27 military officers, all from the western provinces of Darfur and Kordofan, had been arrested and accused of involvement in a coup attempt.
“Their arrest is aimed to eliminating westerners from the armed forces,” he said, denying that they had any connection with the PC.
The information minister confirmed 10 army officers, including a colonel, and seven PC members were arrested for “planning, in coordination with the Popular Congress, acts of subversion.”
The officers were arrested “just before embarking on carrying out the acts of subversion”, said Malik, adding that authorities had been “monitoring” the them since 2002.
The military and civilian suspects will be “taken to court and an investigation (that) has already begun is completed,” he said.
Turabi himself told AFP on Tuesday 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, although he has criticised government policy in the region.