Turabi was freed in October 2003 after spending nearly three years under house arrest

KHARTOUM, March 31 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Sudan’s opposition leader Hassan Al-Turabi was arrested Wednesday, March 31, in the capital Khartoum after on charges of attempting to mount a coup d’etat.

His wife, Wissal Al-Mahdi, told Aljazeera television that scores of security men surrounded their home in the small hours of Wednesday and arrested the 71-year-old leader of the Popular Congress (PC) opposition party.

She added that several other leading PC members had also been picked up.

The move came after the arrest on Sunday, March 28, of ten Sudanese army officers on suspicion of involvement in a plotted military putsch apparently related to the ongoing conflict in west Sudan's Darfur region, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The officers arrested were thought to belong to the PC, which said Monday, March 29, that there had been a government crackdown on senior party officials following allegations of a coup attempt from within the army.

PC deputy leader Abdullah Hassan Ahmad was summoned by security police on Sunday night, a party statement said.

The authorities then launched a wave of arrests against party officials and rounded up or transferred a raft of officers in the army, police and security services who originated from Darfur, it added.

The fighting in the west of Sudan has intensified as the government and the main rebel group, Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), are coming closer than ever to strike a long-awaited comprehensive peace agreement to end bloody 20-year war.

They signed last January an accord on sharing the oil-rich country's wealth in the south, one the main sticking obstacles to peace.

Other two obstacles are power sharing and the status of the three disputed areas Abyei, southern Blue Nile State and the Nuba Mountains.

‘Pretext’

The accusations of involvement in a coup attempt were a “pretext for a crushing military campaign against the people of Darfur”, the PC charged.

One of the party official accused the Sudanese authorities Tuesday, March 30, of having invented the story of a coup to dissolve Turabi's PC party.

Turabi told AFP on Tuesday that six party officials, including three politburo members, had been detained.

He linked the crackdown to government charges that his party supported the year-old rebel movement among Darfur's indigenous non-Arab minorities, an allegation he vigorously denied.

A Muslim scholar and a seasoned politician, Turabi had been freed in October 2003 after spending nearly three years under house arrest.

He was detained in 2001 after a power struggle with incumbent President Omar Al-Bashir.

Turabi's arrest heightened a 14-month political drama in which Bashir tried to sideline Turabi, an ally who helped him seize power in a bloodless military coup in 1989, but has since posed a challenge Bashir’s own power.

In December 1999, Bashir declared a state of emergency and ousted Turabi by dissolving parliament.

In May, Turabi was suspended from his post as secretary general of the ruling National Congress, prompting him to form the breakaway PC.

He was arrested three times in the 1970s under the government of Gaafar Numeiri.

Erudite Turabi had vowed to establish an Islamic state if he took office.