Police arrest acting PNC leader

More than 35 senior officials and supporters of the opposition Popular National Congress (PNC) were arrested on Tuesday as they were trying to organise a press conference, AFP news agency reported that day. The arrests were made in front of the PNC headquarters in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, and included that of PNC acting secretary-general, Abdullah Hasan Ahmad, it said. "We were trying to organise a news conference inside the party's headquarters when security men took us away and arrested a number of our men," Wisal al-Mahdi, wife of the PNC leader, Hasan al-Turabi, was quoted as saying. Police claimed that PNC members were attempting to force their way into the party's headquarters, which have been sealed and guarded for the last eight months. Tuesday's arrests come a day after the government suspended legal action against Turabi and four of his PNC colleagues for trying to undermine the constitution, and waging war against the state - crimes punishable by death in Sudan. The five men were arrested and the party's assets frozen in February after the PNC signed a memorandum of understanding with the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), undertaking to step up "peaceful popular resistance" in Sudan. Although four of the PNC detainees were released on Monday, Turabi was kept in "precautionary detention" under Sudan's National Security Act, which meant that he could remain in detention for another four months, AFP reported.