Goodwill Visit by Sudanese Islamist Culminates in Violence in Canada

By Bob Hurd and Greg Noakes

Hassan Abdullah Al Turabi, a small, frail Sudanese legal scholar, has a reputation that belies his physical size. For some he is the foremost Islamic scholar of his time, an intellectual involved in the practical application of ideas. For others he is one of the most dangerous men in the Middle East, an ideologue bent on the imposition of an Islamic state in the Sudan at any cost. Turabi's recent goodwill visit to Britain and North America was designed to ease tensions and explain his ideas and motivations. Instead, it culminated in an attack that left him hospitalized in Canada, and the two sides in the debate as polarized as ever.

Hassan Al Turabi was born in the Sudan in 1932. He received a traditional Islamic education from his father and went on to take degrees from the University of Khartoum, the University of London and the Sorbonne, where he received his doctorate in 1964. Afterwards he became dean of the law faculty at the University of Khartoum and was a leader in Sudanese Islamist politics.

He was jailed in 1969 by the regime of Jaafar Nimeiri and spent the next seven years in prison. Released in 1976, he joined Nimeiri's government, which at the time was trying to introduce the shariah (Islamic law) into the Sudanese legal system. Turabi lost favor with Nimeiri, and when the latter fell Turabi joined the government of his successor, Sadiq Al Mahdi.

In 1986 Turabi formed the National Islamic Front (NIF), which quickly grew into one of the Sudan's most important and best organized political parties. In June 1989, Al Mahdi was toppled by a military coup led by Lt. Gen. Omar Al Bashir, who initially imprisoned Turabi for several months.

Upon his release, Turabi reassumed the leadership of the NIF, which by then had become a linchpin in the Bashir government. Although he holds no official position, Turabi wields tremendous influence in the government, the army and the security forces, and is said by many to be the power behind the throne in the Sudan.

Turabi is also an important player on the international Islamist scene in his role as scholar, organizer and spokesperson. He has written extensively on Islamic and comparative law, advocating a flexible and progressive interpretation of the shariah and its contemporary application. He is one of the founders and leaders of the Popular Arab Islamic Conference, an Islamist group formed during the Gulf war as a counterweight to the more traditional and conservative Organization of the Islamic Conference. Fluent in Arabic, English, French and German, Turabi is also an articulate voice for the Islamist movement.

Turabi's critics, however, cite increases in human rights violations under the NIF-supported Sudanese regime. Despite Bashir government denials, Amnesty International, Africa Watch and other groups have documented numerous cases of torture, illegal detention and arrests without due process of law. The Bashir government has continued to prosecute the civil war in southern Sudan, and in the past has blocked humanitarian food shipments into the war zone.

Many observers view Sudan's current orientation as a potential source of instability in the Arab and Muslim worlds. They point to the Bashir government's links with Iran and its alleged support for radical Islamist groups as proof of the Sudan's intention to export its ideology throughout the region. Turabi's critics say that given his influence over the current Sudanese regime, Turabi must bear some responsibility for the government's crimes.

In an effort to improve Sudanese-Western relations and present the Islamist case to an international audience, Turabi recently undertook a goodwill visit to Britain, the U.S. and Canada. Though he was meeting with government officials between his public presentations, Turabi stressed that he was only a private citizen, and that his was not an official visit.

Although some of Turabi's presentations were given to sympathetic audiences, at other venues he faced stiff and sometimes hostile questioning from journalists, scholars and Sudanese exiles. At one of his London talks, for example, he was confronted by a Sudanese man who had been jailed by the Bashir government and had lost a leg to torture. The man removed his artificial leg, brandished his prosthesis, and challenged Turabi to explain the regime's human rights record. Turabi was clearly shaken by the incident.

The London confrontation raised the question of Hassan Al Turabi's security during his speaking tour. Because he does not hold a post in the Sudanese government and since his visit was unofficial, Turabi was essentially traveling as a private citizen. Nevertheless, he was a potential target for Sudanese exile groups and individuals.

The Question of Security

Turabi's first public appearance in Washington took place at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. A source at the Center told the Washington Report that Washington, DC police were unresponsive to Center concerns about Turabi's visit. Because of the presence of foreign diplomats at Turabi's presentation, the Center contacted the State Department and eventually police protection was arranged.

Before and during Turabi's talk, a peaceful demonstration was held outside the Center. When Turabi exited from a side door accompanied only by a policeman and a private bodyguard, the demonstrators rushed at him. Although the crowd closed to within several feet of Turabi, he was safely removed from the scene in a police cruiser. Subsequently, additional security measures were taken at Turabi's appearance at an American Muslim Council banquet in his honor and at the Brookings Institution.

The next stop on Turabi's itinerary was Canada. His visa, initially held up by the Ministry of External Affairs, eventually was granted at the request of several parliament members. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) undertook a threat assessment in response to information that Sudanese exile groups were planning protests for Turabi's visit.

Canada has a large Sudanese expatriate community, many of whom consider themselves to be in political exile, and CSIS determined that Turabi could be in some danger. The CSIS threat assessment was forwarded to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and other government departments, according to CSIS spokesperson Celine Boudrias. RCMP officials in Ottawa said that protection for foreign visitors to Canada is extended only at the request of the Canadian Ministry of External Affairs.

External Affairs spokesperson Nicole Martelle would not confirm whether or not the ministry had received the CSIS threat assessment regarding Turabi's visit. According to sources at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, no one in External Affairs or the RCMP was aware of the incident at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC. In any case, the RCMP said that no official request was made for extra security for Hassan Al Turabi.

Nor did Turabi himself request police protection. According to Said Zafar, Turabi's host in the Toronto area and organizer of his Canadian visit, the CSIS asked the Sudanese scholar whether he felt he was in any danger. Turabi replied that it was God who provided life, and God who took it away.

One of Turabi's appointments while in Canada was with External Affairs officials at the ministry in Ottawa. Several Sudanese opposition groups staged a demonstration outside the ministry during his visit. Turabi avoided a confrontation with the demonstrators by using a side exit, and was taken to the Ottawa airport for a return flight to Toronto.

Among the organizers of the External Affairs protest was Hashim Mohammed, 35, a six-foot-nine-inch Sudanese martial arts champion who taught karate at the UAE airforce academy for several years in the mid-1980s. Mohammed left the Sudan in 1987, living in New York until 1990 and afterwards in Ottawa. Mohammed, who entered Canada as a political exile, was formerly a member of Sadiq Al Mahdi's Umma party, and is loosely affiliated with the Sudanese Democratic Alliance, the main Sudanese opposition group in exile.

After the demonstration at the Ministry of External Affairs broke up, Mohammed and several others took a friend from Toronto to the Ottawa airport, where the group encountered Turabi and his entourage, including Ahmed Makki of Ottawa and Said Zafar. Harsh words were exchanged, and Mohammed rushed at Turabi, knocking aside Makki and a Somali aide, while Zafar also was pushed. Mohammed knocked down Turabi, whose head struck the pavement.

Mohammed, who did not attempt to flee or resist arrest, has been charged with two counts of assault and one count of assault causing bodily harm.

A "Protected Person"

Hassan Al Turabi, who was knocked unconscious, was admitted into intensive care with contusions to the head and bruising of the brain. It was estimated that he would spend several weeks in the hospital undergoing observation for his head injuries. Ahmed Makki was treated and released. As a result of the assault, Turabi was declared a "protected person" by the Canadian government and was extended RCMP protection.

Though he declined to discuss the specifics of his case, Hashim Mohammed told the Washington Report that he opposes Turabi because the Bashir regime "brought fascism, murder and torture to the Sudan," and "lacks even one percent of support from the population." Mohammed believes that the current government is manipulating frustration and discontent among the people in its pursuit of power and wealth. "Democracy for them is a suffocating environment," Mohammed said of the NIF. "They used a group of military officers to come to power." Describing himself as a very religious, Mohammed said that Turabi and his followers were using religion for political purposes, adding that "these people have nothing to do with Islam."

Paradoxically, many consider Turabi to be one of the leading architects of a contemporary Islam free of traditionalist lethargy and of knee-jerk obscurantism. Even his fiercest enemies acknowledge Turabi's razor-sharp intellect, powerful oratorical skills and his ability as a political tactician. As an intellectual equally at home in both the Islamic and Western scholastic traditions and an activist engaged in the practical, day-to-day aspects of politics and government, many in the Islamist movement look to Turabi as a trail blazer in the creation of a true Islamic state in the Arab world.

Although many of Turabi's writings and statements are inspiring, the current situation in the Sudan is not. Sudanese await the elimination of the present gap between rhetoric and reality. As his recent visit demonstrates, Hassan Al Turabi is a man both respected and reviled, but undeniably one of the most important leaders in a movement that itself inspires both hope and fear.

Bob Hurd and Greg Noakes, both Muslims, are staff writers for the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.