Sudan Officials Detain 18 Accused of Planning Coup

Sudan detained 18 military officers and opposition members it accused of planning a coup, including former presidential ally Hassan Turabi, Defense Minister Bekri Hassan Salih said Wednesday.

Turabi, who once called the United States “the incarnation of the devil” and said he regarded Osama bin Laden as a hero, was taken into custody before dawn at his home in Khartoum, the capital.

It was the first government acknowledgment of a thwarted plan to oust the president, Lt. Gen. Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir.

Salih said the officers, led by a colonel, had been planning the coup since the middle of last year, assisted by Turabi’s Popular Congress party.

Communications Minister Zahawi Ibrahim Malik said Turabi was arrested because he had issued a provocative statement that advocated “regionalism and tribalism.”

On Monday, Turabi’s party said in a statement that police had arrested several party leaders and army officers in connection with an alleged coup plot, which the party denies.

Turabi was once a close ally of Bashir and the main ideologue of the Islamic fundamentalist government that was set up after Bashir seized power in 1989.

In the 1990s, when Turabi had great influence, Sudan was a haven for Islamic extremists.

He and Bashir fell out in 1999 when Bashir accused Turabi, then the speaker of parliament, of trying to grab power and stripped him of his position.

After the falling-out, Bashir began to move away from Islamic fundamentalism, in part, experts say, out of eagerness to get foreign aid and technology from the West to exploit oil resources.