Sudanese Islamists released from jail

KHARTOUM, Jan 19 (Reuters) – Sudanese Islamists are being released from jail, including Islamist Hassan al-Turabi’s son and other of Turabi’s opposition party members, party officials said on Wednesday.

“The news is coming in now that some of our people are being freed, among them is his (Turabi’s) son, Siddiq al-Turabi,” the deputy leader of Turabi’s Popular Congress party, Hassan Abdallah Ahmed, told Reuters. He added there was no news on Turabi himself, but they expected he may be released soon.

Turabi, a former ally of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, was jailed last September after the government accused his party of attempting a coup and of involvement in a two-year-old rebellion in the country’s remote western Darfur region.

Human rights activists in Khartoum have said they expected him to be released after the signing of a peace deal to end more than two decades of civil war in the south, which was signed last week. The constitutional court had ruled Turabi was being held under emergency law, which is to be lifted throughout most of Sudan under the terms of the southern peace deal.

Turabi’s party was suspended following accusations of similar coup attempts back in April last year. Since his split with Bashir’s government, Turabi has spent much of his time in jail or under house arrest.