Sudan Imposes Security Clampdown After Saying It Crushed Coup Bid

KHARTOUM (AFP) - Sudan's government imposed a security clampdown after claiming it had foiled a coup attempt by supporters of jailed former ally Hassan al-Turabi, a claim derided by Turabi's party and by anti-government rebels.
Security forces set up road blocks at strategic locations in and around the capital and searched vehicles and people in an effort to round up suspects, including the alleged coup leader, Al-Haj Adam Youssef, witnesses said.
Information Minister Al-Zawahy Ibrahim Malik told journalists that two army officers and a number of soldiers were involved in the alleged plot to overthrow President Omar al-Bashir and that the officers had been arrested.
"The arrests are continuing and so are the search operations," Malik said at a press conference after a meeting of the cabinet.
"The plotters were planning to seize the radio and TV stations, the Council of Ministers offices and other important installations."
He added that the suspects, whose number he declined to give, would receive "a fair trial."
Friday night, the government said Islamists led by Youssef, the communications secretary of Turabi's Popular Congress party, had planned to carry out the coup in Khartoum following the main weekly Muslim prayers at midday.
Nearly all those involved were arrested, except Youssef, the interior ministry said.
Security forces also uncovered a large arms cache outside Khartoum before dawn Saturday, Interior Minister Abdulrahim Mohammed Hussein told state radio.
The cache found in the village of Um al-Qura, 30 kilometres (20 miles) north of the capital, included 300 Kalashnikov rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and ammunition, the minister said.
A PC official who spoke on condition of anonymity, said "the government has decided to amputate the Popular Congress from politics for fear of the strong competition it will pose in general elections."
He claimed that "all the base of the Islamic movement supports the Popular Congress."
He also said crackdowns on the PC were in line with a strategy by the ruling National Congress to create animosity between the PC and other political forces, by branding the party as one that practices politics through coups and sabotage.
For its part, Sudan's main rebel group swiftly accused Khartoum of lying about the alleged coup attempt in order to ward off foreign pressure over its failure to pacify the war-torn western region of Darfur.
"It is all made up to divert international attention and pressure it is getting over the Darfur conflict and other related issues," Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army spokesman Samson Kwaje told AFP in Nairobi, where the two sides are engaged in peace talks.
Another government opponent also dismissed the claim, saying it was an attempt to rein in political opponents.
"I do not believe that this information is true," said retired General Abul Rahman Saeed, vice chairman of the National Democratic Alliance, a grouping of northern and southern opposition groups.
Saeed, a former army deputy chief of staff for operations, said he could not imagine a civilian institution like the PC attempting to overthrow a military regime.
The government simply wanted an excuse to clamp down on the PC, which it has accused of supporting Darfur-based rebels of the Justice and Equality Movement and sabotaging peace negotiations with the group.
The PC was already targeted by a major clampdown earlier this month after the authorities announced they had discovered a string of arms caches around the capital.
Turabi himself was moved from house arrest to jail, while more than 30 of his leading supporters were detained.
The interior ministry said information obtained during the earlier clampdown had enabled it to foil Friday's coup attempt, adding that those arrested have "confessed in detail".
The intelligence source cited by SUNA said the coup plotters had even prepared a statement for broadcast should the attempt have succeeded.
He added that they planned to "seize vital installations around Khartoum" and "execute 38 government leaders."
The interior ministry warned that "harbouring (Youssef) or withholding information that might lead to his arrest constitutes a crime punishable by law."
A longtime mentor of Bashir, Turabi, 74, is awaiting trial on a raft of offences against the state, including incitement to sedition, sabotage and undermining the regime.
The PC leader, who was detained in late March amid government allegations of a coup attempt by sympathisers of ethnic minority rebels in Darfur, had been at liberty for only six months since being freed from three years of house arrest last year.
Turabi had been increasingly critical of the scorched earth policy adopted by the government in Darfur, where the United Nations says up to 50,000 have been killed and about 1.4 million left homeless amid clashes between the rebels and state-sponsored Arab militia.
But Bashir said in a speech Saturday, in which he ordered youth to report for training at military camps, accused the PC of being lackeys of the United States.
"The true enemies of Sudan are not foreigners," he said, "but their collaborators at home. May these collaborators who pretend to be Muslims and who want to strike people at Friday prayers be destroyed."