Jailed Sudan Islamist leader hospitalised after renewing hunger strike

KHARTOUM, July 25 (AFP) — Jailed Sudanese Islamist leader Hassan al-Turabi was admitted to hospital Sunday a week after renewing a hunger strike against his detention, his son told AFP.

“Sheikh Hassan al-Turabi was this evening taken to Saheroun (Police) Hospital in Khartoum because he got very weak due to long days of hunger strike and fasting, surviving on a few dates and water,” Siddeik al-Turabi said.

Siddeik said his father had renewed his hunger strike alone on July 18 just three days after he and dozens of other prisoners ended a two-week fast.

Turabi’s wife Wisal told AFP last week that her husband and other prisoners had given up their hunger strike on certain conditions.

But Siddeik said the “authorities had failed to keep their promise” to either try or release his father and the other prisoners.

Twelve detainees were freed earlier this month in what officials said was part of a periodic “revision” of individual cases, though Islamist sources said it was because of their deteriorating health as a result of the original hunger strike, begun on June 30.

Turabi, a one-time mentor of President Omar al-Beshir, is awaiting trial on a raft of offences against the state including incitement to sedition, sabotage and undermining the regime.

The Popular Congress leader, who was detained in late March amid government allegations of a coup attempt by sympathisers of a rebellion by indigenous minorities in the war-torn western region of Darfur, had been at liberty for only six months since being freed from three years of house arrest last year.

The opposition leader has been increasingly critical of the scorched earth policy adopted by the government in Darfur, where the United Nations says up to 50,000 have been killed and more than a million left homeless by clashes between the rebels and state-sponsored Arab militias.