INTERVIEW-Sudan AG expects death sentence for coup plotters

By Opheera McDoom

KHARTOUM, March 27 (Reuters) – Sudan’s attorney-general said on Sunday he expected 72 men charged with attempting a coup in Khartoum would be sentenced to death because the evidence against them was so clear.

A number of the men are members of the opposition Islamist Popular Congress (PCP), whose leader Hassan al-Turabi was jailed last September after the authorities accused his party of plotting to overthrow the government.

Attorney General Mohamed Farid said Turabi would be released with all other political prisoners as soon as emergency law was lifted in Sudan — a step officials expect to follow the promulgation of a new constitution around May.

Farid said the 72 men, whose full trial will begin on April 2, had confessed to a legal committee in his office to plotting to overthrow the government. The men are charged with waging war against the state.

“I expect that in these cases there is clear enough evidence and I expect that the death sentence will be issued for them,” Farid told Reuters in his office.

He stressed the sentence would be up to the court to decide. “Whether the court will decide this and whether they will implement the sentence after is up to them.”

He said his office would not make any specific recommendation to the court.

NO EXECUTIONS SINCE 1995

Farid said no one had been executed for any crime since he took office in 1995. Most convictions for political crimes have resulted in prison sentences and most of the prisoners were released before they served the full sentence, he said.

Farid, who put the case together, said he had personally listened to the confessions of the accused, who also led investigators to five arms caches all over Khartoum. He denied there was any torture, as the defendants claim.

“They were eating and drinking and praying with us here … There was no evidence of any torture or beating of them,” he said.

In the case of Shamseddin Idriss, whose death certificate, seen by Reuters, showed broken limbs and a blow to the head after his detention by state security forces and before any charges were brought against him, he said a committee was investigating the matter.

He said most of the 72 were members of the PCP, which the party denies. It says most are boys from Sudan’s western Darfur region and only a few are members.

“All the fundamental players, the leaders, are from the Popular Congress,” Farid said.

PCP leader Turabi is still in jail without charge. Farid said this could continue for as long as state security forces felt was necessary.

There was not enough evidence to link Turabi directly to the attempted coup in September or a similar one in March 2004, but state security had information that he was indirectly planning the coup, he said.

“I expect that when emergency law is lifted all political prisoners will be released, including the sheikh (Turabi).”