Sudanese officials accused Mr. Turabi of working with a Darfurian rebel force that staged a bold, unprecedented attack on Khartoum on Saturday. Mr. Turabi’s Islamic political party is widely known to have links with the Darfurian rebel group, Justice and Equality Movement, which also has an Islamist agenda. Hundreds of the group’s fighters crossed the desert from Darfur and penetrated the suburbs of Khartoum, provoking intense clashes that killed upwards of 100 people.
A high-ranking Sudanese police official said that Mr. Turabi’s contacts may have helped the rebels get as far as they got.
“They had inside information,” the police official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to journalists. “The rebels had some people inside in Khartoum. They talked to them. They got information about where our forces were positioned and they choose another way.”
The police official said Mr. Turabi and several of his colleagues had been taken in for questioning and were being held at an undisclosed location.
Incarceration is nothing new for Mr. Turabi. He has been a controversial Islamist scholar for decades and is believed to have played an important role in the rise of Sudan’s president, Omar al- Bashir. Mr. Turabi was the one who invited Mr. Bin Laden to Khartoum in the mid-1990s, when Khartoum was a major base of operations for the Al Qaeda terrorist network.
Mr. Turabi, who is around 70 years old and studied in London and Paris, fell out with Mr. Bashir in 2000 and was imprisoned for five years. His wife and elder son were also detained. In an interview last year Mr. Turabi said, “Jail? We’re all used to it. It’s nothing to worry about.”
Mr. Turabi’s arrest on Monday seemed to be part of a widening crackdown. Government soldiers have fanned out across Khartoum, stopping motorists at checkpoints and demanding to see identity cards. A curfew that had been lifted on Sunday was re-imposed on Monday in some areas around Khartoum. There were also reports of sporadic gunfire in and around the capital, which is usually one of the safest big cities in Africa.
The police official said that more than 200 rebel fighters have been captured and according to the official, the rebels said they had been trained and armed in Abeche, Chad.
The Sudanese government broke off diplomatic relations with Chad on Sunday, accusing its equally troubled neighbor of sponsoring the assault on Khartoum, which may have been a form of retribution Earlier this year, a rebel force in Chad nearly overran the presidential palace and many analysts said Sudanese forces participated in that attack. The two countries, who share a long desert border, have been in a near state of war for several years.