Prominent Sudanese politician Hassan Al-Turabi dies aged 84

Sudan’s opposition leader and founder of Popular Congress Party (PCP), has died at the age of 84.

According to State-run TV, Al-Turabi passed away at the Royal Care International Hospital in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital.

He was brought to the hospital early on Saturday “after suffering a heart attack in the morning and died”, a hospital source told AFP.

Turabi, one of the country’s most notable opposition figures, formed the Popular Congress Party in 1999 to challenge long-serving President Omar al-Bashir and his ruling National Congress Party, a group Turabi was previously aligned with.

He was detained several times over his political career, including in January 2009, just two days after he urged Bashir to surrender to the ICC on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide over the regime’s conduct of the conflict in Darfur.

Born in Kassala in eastern Sudan, the son of a local imam, Turabi held a master’s degree in law from London and a doctorate from Sorbonne University in Paris.

The cause of death was not immediately known.