Sudan Islamist opposition party says suspended
By Nima Elbagir
KHARTOUM, April 1 (Reuters) – Authorities in Sudan have suspended Islamist leader Hassan al-Turabi’s opposition party from political activity after he was detained for allegedly inciting tribal tensions, a party official said on Thursday.
Turabi’s secretary Awad Babiker also said security forces took over the Popular Congress party headquarters on Wednesday night and arrested 30 members in Khartoum and the troubled western Darfur region.
The Popular Congress was loosely linked this week to a group of officers arrested on suspicion of plotting a coup, according to a high-ranking military official.
Information Minister Al-Zahawi Ibrahim Malik later said the plot was very limited in its scope and was an attempt to target the oil-producing nation’s Khartoum refinery and power generators.
Babiker said the party was informed of the ban on political activity after it held a meeting in Khartoum University where they vowed to take on the government using peaceful methods.
“We were then informed verbally by the registrar (for political parties and organisations) himself that they were going to suspend our political activity,” he told Reuters.
The text of the registrar’s decree obtained by Reuters from a government source said the party’s activities had been suspended pending results of a committee investigating the charges against it.
The decree said the committee had presented: “…preliminary documents that implicate the party in the plot that contravenes article 4 (3) of the 2001 law governing political parties and organisations that… prohibits the use of violence or power (in political activities).”
Turabi was previously detained in 2001 after a power struggle with Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and was released from house arrest in October last year. Since his release he has openly criticised Bashir’s government.
The Sudanese ruling National Congress party on Thursday released a statement on state television condemning the Popular Congress for the alleged plot and accusing them of also planning “to assassinate and detain a number of prominent personalities”.
“Since the release of (Turabi) and the party’s resumption of its political activities, fanaticism, racial incitement and justification of violence and barbarism became their calls from pulpits and satellite channels,” the statement said according to BBC Monitoring.
Minister Malik on Wednesday accused Turabi’s party of funding rebels from Darfur, who launched a revolt in February last year accusing the government of neglecting the arid area.
Turabi, a former ally of Bashir, has previously said he supported the charges made by the Darfur rebels but was not involved in the insurrection.
The government said earlier on Thursday indirect peace talks with the Darfur rebels had begun in the Chadian capital N’Djamena, after it boycotted the opening session in protest at the presence of international observers.