Seven opposition members released, pro-government demonstration against foreign intervention in Darfur
KHARTOUM, Sudan, July 28, 2004 (AP) — Sudan ‘s government has released seven senior members of the Popular Congress party after more than three months in detention, the son of the opposition party’s leader said Wednesday.
Meanwhile, a pro-government demonstration was staged in Khartoum, where protesters claimed there was no need for foreign intervention in the humanitarian crisis enveloping the nation.
The official Al-Anba newspaper reported Wednesday the government had freed 44 members of the Popular Congress Tuesday night, but Sediq Turabi, son of party leader Hassan Turbai, said only seven members had been released.
Sediq Turabi also said the government had told his family that Hassan Turabi would be released soon, but it did not give a date.
Hassan Turabi and about 70 other members of the Popular Congress were detained around March 31 on suspicion of plotting to overthrow the government. The party has denied the charge.
Turabi’s lawyer, Kamal Omar, said in a phone interview from Khartoum that he visited Hassan Turabi in hospital on Wednesday.
“We expect Turabi’s release within 48 hours,” Omar said.
Turabi was the main ideologue of the Islamic fundamentalist government set up after President Omar el-Bashir seized power in 1989. But Turabi and el-Bashir fell out in 1999 when the president accused Turabi, then speaker of parliament, of trying to grab power and stripped him of his position.
In a separate development, hundreds of Sudanese women staged a pro-government demonstration in Khartoum Wednesday saying there was no cause for foreign military intervention in Darfur province.
The women handed in a letter to the United Nations office, saying “the Darfur problem is an internal Sudanese problem and should be solved by the Sudanese and there is no justification for any foreign military intervention.”
No Western power or group of countries has said it favors deploying troops in Darfur. However, the Khartoum government has failed to curb the violence that has led to what the U.N. calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
After two rebel groups from Darfur’s African tribes took up arms for more land and resources in February 2003, pro-government Arab militia known as Janjaweed began a campaign of ethnic cleansing against people of African origin.
Up to 30,000 people, most of them black Africans, have been killed in Darfur; a million people have been driven from their homes; and an estimated 2.2 million are in urgent need of food or medical attention.