Sudan opposition says member tortured to death

By Opheera McDoom

KHARTOUM, Sept 11 (Reuters) – A member of Sudan’s opposition Islamist Popular Congress has been tortured to death in detention by security forces, a party official said on Saturday.

The security services said last week they had arrested 33 members of Hassan al-Turabi’s Popular Congress for plotting sabotage with help from Sudan’s eastern neighbour Eritrea.

“Shamseddin Idriss … died from brain damage and his hand and also his leg was broken,” Turabi’s secretary, Awad Babiker, said. “He was tortured.”

The Interior Ministry said it had no information on the case of the 25-year-old.

Earlier, the ministry said it had discovered an arms cache north of the capital Khartoum in a dawn raid on Friday, including 100 Kalashnikovs and 10 mortars. Sudan’s media carried photos of the weapons.

The weapons were hidden by a member of the Popular Congress in collaboration with three others, said the ministry.

Turabi is under house arrest accused of inciting tribal tensions.

The government has accused Turabi’s party 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.

One Popular Congress official said the number of arrests was increasing and had reached about 60.

Babiker said a policeman had gone to Idriss’s family home and told the father that the death occurred on Saturday because of stomach problems.

But when the family took the body to a doctor he found the “reason of death was brain injury and (that) he also had a broken hand and leg”, said Babiker.

The United States said on Thursday the Darfur conflict amounted to genocide and blamed the government and Arab militias, known as Janjaweed, for the violence.

The United Nations estimates some 50,000 people have been killed, more than one million have been displaced and that 200,000 refugees are in neighbouring Chad.