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Khartoum: Sudan briefly detained its leading fundamentalist Islamic ideologue on Monday, accusing him of aiding a Darfur rebel attack on the capital but then releasing him without charge, according to his party and state media.
Hassan Al Turabi was arrested after dawn at his home in Khartoum and at least 10 other members of his Popular Congress Party members were detained in a government sweep across the city, said Awadh Ba Bakr, a relative and close aide to Turabi.
Bakr says the opposition leader was questioned by security and released without charges about 15 hours later.
Turabi is believed to wield influence with Khalil Ibrahim, the leader of the Justice and Equality Movement, whose fighters launched an unprecedented attack Saturday near Khartoum, hundreds of miles from their bases in the country's far west.
The attack was the closest Darfur rebels have ever come to the seat of Sudan's government, which they accuse of marginalising ethnic African minorities and worsening the area's humanitarian crisis.
Sudan's official news agency quoted unidentified government officials as saying that rebels already in custody implicated Turabi and other party members as part of a "conspiracy." Interrogations were underway, it said.
Turabi is one of the founders of Islamist politics in Sudan and provided the ideological basis for President Omar Al Bashir's coup and the creation of an Islamic state in 1989.
Both he and Ibrahim were once part of the regime, and as fellow Islamists, ideological allies.
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