KHARTOUM, 30 April 2005 — Sudanese authorities have moved detained Islamist leader Hassan Turabi out of prison and placed him under house arrest north of the capital Khartoum, his wife said yesterday. “We were informed by the security services last night that the sheikh was transferred to a house in Kafouri. My sons, daughters and I went there and stayed with him” until early yesterday, Wisal Al-Mahdi told AFP. She said Turabi, leader of the opposition Popular Congress party and former mentor of President Omar Bashir, seemed to be in good health.
“The house is of course better than prison, but in both cases he is deprived of his freedom,” said Mahdi, adding that her husband had been relocated to the same remand home where he was held on previous occasions. Turabi was arrested in March 2004 amid government allegations of a coup attempt by sympathizers of the ethnic minority rebels in the western region of Darfur. He had been free for only six months since being released from three years of house arrest in 2003.
Turabi’s lawyer criticized his transfer to house arrest. “It signals an extension of his detention. We are going to submit a petition for the release of Dr. Turabi,” said Kamal Omar. The PC leader had been increasingly critical of the government’s scorched-earth policy in war-ravaged Darfur, where some 300,000 people have died and more than two million left homeless by clashes between the rebels and state-sponsored Arab militias. He is awaiting trial on a raft of offences against the state including incitement to sedition, sabotage and undermining the regime. Turabi helped Bashir’s rise to power in 1989 before they fell out 10 years later.
Meanwhile, the Bush administration has forged a close intelligence partnership with Sudan, which has helped Washington’s war on terrorism, the Los Angeles Times reported yesterday. Sudan, which once welcomed Osama Bin Laden, has provided access to terrorism suspects and shared intelligence data with the United States, even though it remains on the US list of state sponsors of terrorism, and has come in for harsh criticism for human rights violations.
The Times said US government officials had confirmed that the CIA flew the chief of Sudan’s intelligence agency to Washington last week for secret meetings, sealing Khartoum’s sensitive and previously veiled partnership with the administration. The newspaper said Sudan had detained Al-Qaeda suspects for interrogation by US agents, given the FBI evidence seized from raids on homes of suspected terrorists, handed over extremists to Arab intelligence agencies and foiled terrorist attacks against US targets.
The paper cited interviews with American and Sudanese intelligence and government officials. Sudan has “given us specific information that is ... important, functional and current,” said a senior US State Department official speaking on condition of anonymity.
The chief of Sudan’s Mukhabarat intelligence agency, Maj. Gen. Salah Abdallah Gosh, told the Times: “We have a strong partnership with the CIA. The information we have provided has been very useful to the United States.”
Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail acknowledged in an interview that the Mukhabarat already had served as the eyes and ears of the CIA in neighboring countries, including Somalia, a sanctuary for Islamic militants. In exchange for its collaboration, Khartoum wants to be removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism and for Washington to lift economic sanctions.
In another development, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan suggested that Africa Union troops in Darfur region could become part of a UN peacekeeping mission or be augmented with a multinational force, according to a draft report obtained by Reuters on Thursday. Annan, in presenting options to the UN Security Council, said any change in the mission would need to be decided by the council, Sudan and the African Union, now the main bulwark against atrocities in Darfur.
The AU has only 2,200 troops, police and observers in Darfur and expects to increase this to 7,700 by the end of September and reach 12,300 by the spring of 2006. But diplomats predicted the AU would need much more help and planning and resources than it is now receiving so its troops on the ground could be increased and rotated.
Annan said a decision should be taken by September 2005 on how to augment the AU force either by “re-hatting” the African troops as a UN peacekeeping mission or seeking a multinational force should violence continue. But he gave no details of what kind of a force may be needed and one European envoy said there would be “no European boots” on the ground.
