Sudan arrests 33 Islamists for sabotage plot
By Opheera McDoom and Nima Elbagir
KHARTOUM, Sept 8 (Reuters) – Sudanese authorities have arrested 33 members of the opposition Islamist Popular Congress for plotting sabotage with help from abroad, party officials and security sources said on Wednesday.
The deputy head of the national security apparatus, Mohmaed Atta, said the arrests were linked to an attempt to sow chaos, but one security source said 14 of the Popular Congress (PC) members had been arrested for attempting a coup.
The arrests of members of the PC, headed by detained Islamist politician Hassan al-Turabi, occurred as the United States piled pressure on Sudan over Darfur with a new U.N. draft resolution threatening sanctions on its oil industry.
The government has accused the PC of involvement in a rebellion in the vast western Darfur region – scene of what the United Nations calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. The party denies the charge.
“It is obvious some factions believed the government was in a weakened state and so felt confident enough to plot another coup attempt,” said the security source, declining to be named.
But Atta told a briefing: “This was not an attempted coup. Rather it was a conspiracy to instigate chaos in the capital to create a feeling among the populous that the govenrment had dropped the reins.”
Atta, whose government has accused Eritrea of supporting rebels in Darfur, said a faction of the PC had brought in weapons from the neighbouring country and distributed them.
An Interior Ministry statement spoke of a “sabotage plot”.
When a group of military officers was charged in March with plotting to assassinate high-level government figures, authorities loosely linked Turabi’s party to the plot.
A high-level military official said at the time it was an attempted coup, but the government later said the operation was too limited in its scope to be a real coup bid.
Police set up checkpoints throughout the capital Khartoum and searched vehicles.
The PC’s chairman of foreign relations, Mohamed al-Amin Khalifa, said earlier 14 party members had been arrested in midnight raids, including one senior party figure.
“They fabricated the same story that there is a sabotage plot,” he said. “They said they are going to send them to the court immediately, but this is just a pretext.”
Khalifa said it was strange the government held peace talks with groups who used violence – a reference to the Darfur fighters and other rebels in the south – but arrested opposition party members.