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Sudan: Govt Arrests Top Bashir Critic
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May 17, 2010 - 8:38:33 AM

Sudan: Govt Arrests Top Bashir Critic

17 May 2010

The government of President Omar al-Bashir in Khartoum has again arrested Bashir's former ally, the Islamist leader, Hassan al-Turabi.

The Sudan Tribune reports from Khartoum that the government accused Turabi of "stirring up hatred, disseminating malicious lies and abuse of Sudan�s foreign relations."

The online news service said the arrest, on Saturday, came as the government closed Ray Alsha�ab, a newspaper close to Turabi's Popular Congress Party (PCP), after it published a report saying Iran had erected a weapons factory in Sudan to supply Islamic insurgents in Africa and the Middle East.

The Tribune reported an information ministry official, Rabie Abdelati, as saying on television: "I do not see any separation between the arrest of the Secretary-General of the Popular Congress Party, Dr. Hassan Al-Turabi and the closure of Ray Alsha�ab."

Rabie likened the newspaper's "unjust and false accusations" to those which led to a United States missile strike on a pharmaceutical factory in August 1998. The U.S. suggested at the time that the factory had been housing chemical weapons.

Initially an ally after Bashir came to power in a coup in 1989, Turabi fell out with the military leader 10 years later. The Tribune reported that he has been detained five times since the fall-out. He has supported the execution of an arrest warrant for Bashir issued by the International Criminal Court.