Sudan says it foiled Islamist coup attempt

KHARTOUM, Sept 25 (AFP) — Sudan’s military-backed government imposed a security clampdown Saturday after announcing that it had foiled a coup attempt by supporters of its now jailed former Islamist ally Hassan al-Turabi.

Security forces set up road blocks at strategic locations in and around the capital and searched vehicles and people in an effort to round up suspects, including the alleged coup leader, Al-Haj Adam Youssef, witnesses said.

The interior ministry announced Friday that security and intelligence agencies had foiled an attempt by members of Turabi’s Popular Congress party to overthrow the regime, hours before they carried it out.

A statement said Islamists led by Youssef, the party’s communications secretary, had planned to execute the conspiracy in Khartoum at 2:00 pm (1100 GMT) following the main weekly Muslim prayers.

The coup plotters chose the time in the knowledge that senior government and military officials would be praying at mosques, the state Sudan News Agency quoted an intelligence official it did not identify as saying.

Nearly all those involved were arrested, except Youssef, the interior ministry said.

SUNA said two senior military officers and several soldiers were detained on suspicion of involvement.

Security forces also uncovered a large arms cache outside Khartoum before dawn Saturday, Interior Minister Abdulrahim Mohammed Hussein told state radio.

The cache found in the village of Um al-Qura, 30 kilometres (20 miles) north of the capital, included 300 Kalashnikov rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and ammunition, the minister said.

“This is another victory over the groups of treason and subversion,” he said.

The Popular Congress was already targeted by a major clampdown earlier this month after the authorities announced they had discovered a string of arms caches around the capital.

Turabi himself was moved from house arrest to jail, while more than 30 of his leading supporters were detained.

The interior ministry said that information obtained during the earlier clampdown had enabled it to foil Friday’s coup attempt.

“Based on the information, your security forces moved and managed, with the help of God, to arrest the high command of this conspiracy,” a ministry statement said.

It added that those arrested have “confessed in detail”.

The intelligence source cited by SUNA said the coup plotters had even prepared a statement for broadcast should the attempt have succeeded.

He added that they planned to “seize vital installations around Khartoum” and “execute 38 government leaders.”

The interior ministry said they also identified Youssef as the mastermind of the conspiracy.

The ministry urged the public to help security forces hunt down “this fugitive criminal”.

It warned that “harbouring him or withholding information that might lead to his arrest constitutes a crime punishable by law.”

A longtime mentor of President Omar al-Beshir, Turabi, 74, 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 ethnic minority rebels in Darfur, had been at liberty for only six months since being freed from three years of house arrest last year.

Turabi had 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 about 1.4 million left homeless amid clashes between the rebels and state-sponsored Arab militia.

Last November, Sudanese Vice President Ali Osman Taha accused Turabi of encouraging sedition in Darfur.

Since then, Khartoum has persistently accused the Popular Congress of fanning the crisis in Darfur, where one of the two rebel groups, the Justice and Equality Movement, is close to the Islamists.