Sudanese government releases opposition leader Hassan Al-Turabi

KHARTOUM) — Security services released today Hassan Al-Turabi, prominent leader of the opposition Popular Congress Party three months after his arrest without charges.

Turabi was jailed on 18 January after statements warning that Sudan would witness protests similar to what occurred in Tunisia. But media outlets close to the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) reported that prisoners captured from the rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) in West Darfur admitted their links and receiving support from Turabi’s party .

Following his release, the prominent Islamist figure said he had never been interrogated or charged during his stay in prison “”No one told me why they arrested me and no one told me why I was released,” Turabi said in his house on Monday evening.

Turabi called on the Sudanese people to start their revolution against the regime saying “the revolution is bound to come”. He stressed it would be worse than its predecessors of October 1964 and April 1985 before to add that the Sudan is currently in a “very dangerous” situation.

Sudanese youth staged small protests in February and March but they failed to mobilize the street. Recently the supporters of the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement also demonstrated in different Sudanese states in the north, east and Darfur.

Commenting on the readiness of the Sudanese street to uprise against the NCP government, Turabi said no one was able to predict the Egyptian revolution. “If I had been asked I would say Egypt would be the last country where a revolutionary change could occur,” he said.

Turabi said his detention for more than three months proves that the NCP government breaks the laws that it has passed in the Sudanese parliament.

In accordance with the national security law, the security services can arrest people without charge for 45 days. By the end of this period the detainee should be tried or released.

Since a power struggle between two factions within the Sudanese Islamists in 1999 and his removal from the parliament, Turabi is regularly arrested over accusations of plotting to overthrow the regime.

(ST)