KHARTOUM, 15 August 2003 — A group of lawyers appealed yesterday to the Sudanese government not to renew the detention of Islamist leader Hassan Al-Turabi for a third year.
“The arrest of Sheikh Dr. Hassan Al-Turabi is politically motivated, as no legal justification has been offered throughout the period of his detention,” said a statement issued by Turabi’s defense council. Turabi’s arrest in February 2001 capped a power struggle with President Omar Al-Beshir, who dismissed the Islamist ideologue from his post of parliamentary speaker in December 1999. On Aug. 15, 2001, the authorities decided to keep Turabi in jail under an emergency law for a renewable period of one year.
