Sudanese authorities have released prominent Islamist opposition leader Hassan al-Turabi after almost two months behind bars, his family said yesterday.
Turabi, a fierce critic of the regime who has been in and out of jail over a career spanning about four decades, was detained in January after calling for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to surrender to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
“My father has been freed from the Port Sudan prison. They took him by plane and he is now at home in Manshia [a Khartoum suburb],” his daughter, Omama al-Turabi, said.
Sudanese security officers arrested Turabi on Jan. 14, two days after he urged al-Bashir to surrender to the ICC, saying he thought the head of state was “politically culpable” for crimes committed in conflict-ridden Darfur.
Turabi, 77, a guiding light in the Islamist-inspired bloodless 1989 coup that swept al-Bashir to power, but now his bitter nemesis, said in January that the president should hand himself over to save Sudan from possible UN sanctions.
“Politically we think he is culpable … He should assume responsibility for whatever is happening in Darfur, displacement, burning all the villages, rapes, I mean systematic rapes, continuously, I mean on a wide scale and the killing,” Turabi said.
The ICC on Wednesday issued an arrest warrant for al-Bashir for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur, accusing him of orchestrating a campaign of murder, torture, rape and pillage during the six years of conflict in the western Sudanese region.
Turabi’s daughter said the family had asked the authorities allow his father to return home because of health concerns after he became ill with flu, suffering a high fever and blood pressure.
Regarded as one of the driving forces behind the introduction of Shariah law in Africa’s largest country in 1983, Turabi was Bashir’s mentor.
In 1989, he rallied behind Bashir, then an obscure military man who had just been promoted to general, to overthrow the democratically elected government of his brother-in-law, Sadeq al-Mahdi.
As senior statesman, he became what many considered to be the real power in a country which he directed towards rigorous Islamic practices.
RSS