Sudanese opposition leader Turabi starts hunger strike to protest three-month detention without trial
KHARTOUM, Sudan, July 01, 2004 (AP) — A detained Sudanese opposition leader has gone on hunger strike, his wife said Thursday, but she stressed that his protest was not meant to coincide with the visit to this African country of U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
Hassan Turabi, leader of the opposition Sudanese Popular Congress, began his hunger strike along with 70 party members Wednesday to protest their three-month detention without a trial on suspicion of plotting to overthrow his one-time ally, President Omar el-Bashir.
Turabi was the main ideologue of the Islamic fundamentalist government set up after el-Bashir seized power in 1989.
The pair fell out in 1999 after el-Bashir accused Turabi, then speaker of parliament, of trying to grab power and stripped him of his position. Turabi had spent two years under house arrest after his party signed a peace deal with the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army, leader of the southern rebellion.
He was detained again March 31 and accused of inciting sedition, sabotage, hatred against the state and undermining the regime. The party and Turabi have denied the accusations.
Turabi’s wife, Wisal al-Mahdi, told The Associated Press that “it is only a coincidence” that the mass hunger strike began when Powell and Annan were in the country to take a first hand look at the humanitarian crisis in the western Darfur state.
Powell and Annan have called on el-Bashir’s government to rein in Arab militias blamed for attacks on African villagers in Darfur, where a 16-month-old conflict has killed up to 30,000 people, driven more than 1 million people from their homes and left more than 2 million in desperate need of aid.
Al-Mahdi said her husband was on hunger strike to protest against the government’s detention of him without trial. She said as the hunger strike could result in the deaths of some of the detainees, whose Islamic faith prohibits suicide, they have been drinking water and eating dates.
In March, police arrested Turabi and about 70 party members, including some military and police officers, accused of being involved in an alleged plot to overthrow el-Bashir. His party was also suspended.
Three other detainees, two from the opposition Umma party and one from the Sudanese Communist Party, have also joined Turabi in the hunger strike, al-Mahdi said.
She said investigators have questioned Turabi only once and he and the other detainees have not been officially charged. She said prison officials had beaten the detainees, deprived them of medicine and kept them in confinement cells.