Sudan announces arrest of 17 in coup plot following earlier detention of opposition party leader

By MOHAMED OSMAN Associated Press Writer

KHARTOUM, Sudan, March 31, 2004 (AP) — Sudan has detained 10 military officers and seven opposition party members who planned to stage a coup, the defense minister said Wednesday in the first government acknowledgment of a thwarted plan to oust the president.

Bakri Hassan Salih told an extraordinary Cabinet meeting that state security discovered the group was planning “acts of subversion on a number of strategic and service establishments.”

“The group was planning to carry out its plot in the coming few days, as a pre-emptive move to abort the current peace process in the country,” Salih told the Cabinet, according to state-run television.

Salih said the officers, led by a colonel, had been planning the coup since the middle of last year, assisted by the opposition Popular Congress, whose leader was arrested earlier Wednesday.

“The concerned bodies are currently conducting investigations and when completed those found guilty will be brought to justice,” Salih said.

In recent days, Arab newspapers and the opposition Popular Congress have reported arrests in connection with an alleged coup, but the government had no direct comment until now.

At dawn Wednesday, police detained opposition leader and Islamic fundamentalist Hassan Turabi, once a close ally of the president but in recent years the government’s main nemesis.

Communications Minister El-Zahawi Ibrahim Malik said Turabi was arrested because he had issued a provocative statement that advocated “regionalism and tribalism.”

Turabi’s wife, Wisal el-Mahdi, accused the government of using the alleged coup plot as a pretext “to oppress our party.”

On Monday, Turabi’s party said in a statement that Sudanese police had arrested several party leaders and army officers in connection with an alleged plot by soldiers, police and security officials from Sudan’s restive Western Darfur province to oust President Omar el-Bashir.

In a statement published by state newspapers Wednesday, Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail said police were investigating “security breaches” by an undisclosed number of people. He did not mention a coup plot nor did he confirm the detainees belonged to the armed forces or Turabi’s party.

The Popular Congress denies involvement in a coup plot or in the rebellion in Darfur, where armed rebels have been fighting government troops since last May, leaving thousands dead and forcing tens of thousands to flee.

Peace talks on Darfur convened in Chad on Wednesday. The Sudanese government is also in negotiations with southern rebels to end a 20-year civil war.

Turabi, a lawyer with degrees from universities in Britain and France, has been a fixture of Sudanese politics since 1965, holding posts under five regimes.

But after signing a memorandum in 2001 with the southern rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army that encouraged any resistance against the government, Turabi was placed under house arrest and his party was banned.

He was released and the ban lifted last October amid a reform drive by el-Bashir. The move was seen as an effort to bring some northern opposition groups into a united front to strengthen his government in peace talks with the southern rebels.

The overture to Turabi was short-lived. In November, first Vice President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha accused Turabi’s party of fomenting the trouble in Darfur.

Turabi was once a close ally of el-Bashir and the main ideologue of the Islamic fundamentalist government that was set up after el-Bashir seized power in 1989. The two men fell out in 1999 when el-Bashir accused Turabi, then the speaker of parliament, of trying to grab power and stripped him of his position.

In the 1990s, when Turabi had great influence over the government, Sudan was a haven for Muslim extremists such as Osama bin Laden.

In a 1998 interview with The Associated Press, Turabi called the U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania “understandable” and said he considered Osama bin Laden a hero.

“Anyone who resists power or persecution – if you like him, you call him … a freedom fighter, a revolutionary,” Turabi said. “It’s only when you don’t like him you use another language, that he’s a terrorist.”

He also lashed out at the United States for launching cruise missiles at a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan in the wake of the embassy bombings.

“All the Sudanese now actually see the United States, generally, as the incarnation of the devil, of evil,” Turabi said.

After the falling out with Turabi, el-Bashir began to move away from Islamic fundamentalism, in part, experts say, out of eagerness to get foreign aid and technology from the West to exploit oil resources.