IRIN Focus on Turabi arrest - "A relationship gone sour"

The warming of relations between Sudan's influential Islamist idealogue, Hassan al-Turabi, and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) was apparently more than President Omar al-Bashir could handle, analysts say. Bashir had dissolved parliament when Turabi was serving as its speaker, in December 1999, two days before pro-Turabi lawmakers were set to vote on curbing Bashir's presidential powers. Eight months later, Turabi set up his own political party, the Popular National Congress, after stepping down as secretary-general of the ruling National Congress party, which had previously been led by Bashir. But then Turabi reportedly signed a "memorandum of understanding" with the the SPLA. Authorities went to his home on Wednesday night and arrested him. The MOU came as a surprise to many because Turabi, a conservative Islamist, had previously advocated a more hardline stance against the Christian-Animist SPLA. Turabi's critics are now likely to accuse him of being an insincere proponent of peace and multipartyism as a means to gain power since falling out with Bashir. Turabi has a large following among students and shopkeepers and he has warned in the past of the potential for a popular uprising in Sudan. "Nobody can impose tyranny on Sudan as the tide of Islam will react," AFP quoted him as saying in May last year at a point when he anticipated arrest but was left untouched. The pan-Arab Asharq al-Awsat newspaper reported on Thursday that Turabi "had expected to be detained this week" for his dealings with the SPLA. "They are now detaining anyone who leaves my house, even if it's just family come to say hello," the newspaper quoted him as saying in an interview shortly before his arrest. "They arrested two traders because they were neighbours of mine." This isn't the only time 68-year-old Turabi has been detained, but it is the first time he has been arrested under Bashir, the man who was once his protege but whom he later came to call a power-hungry military dictator. Turabi had been imprisoned for seven years after a leftist coup in 1969, and was jailed again in 1985 until the fall of the regime of Jafar Nimeiri later that year. From 1979 to 1982 he had served as attorney general under Nimeiri and remained a presidential adviser on legal and foreign affairs until he was imprisoned. In 1988, the National Islamic Front, which Turabi founded and was later renamed the National Congress, joined the government of Sadiq al Mahdi, where he served as attorney general, minister of justice and minister of foreign affairs. Western nations are unlikely to raise much protest over Turabi's arrest, despite his pro-democracy stance. Dubbed in the past by the Western media as the "pope of terrorism," Turabi had laughed at the United States for its pursuit of Islamic terrorist Osama bin Laden, saying that by hunting him international authorities were turning the terrorist into a hero. The United States accuses Sudan of sponsoring terrorism. Khartoum, however, has adopted a less militant stance since Turabi, the main idealogue behind the Bashir government, was sidelined in 1999. The government has since mended ties with neighboring countries, especially Ethiopia and Egypt, which used to accuse Sudan of "exporting Islamic extremism". Turabi was born in Kassala, eastern Sudan, in 1932 to a family with a long tradition of Islamic learning and the mystical Islamic practice of Sufism. He studied law at Khartoum University, the University of London and the Sorbonne in Paris.