Sudan's attorney general said on Sunday he expected 72 men charged with attempting a coup in Khartoum would be sentenced to death because the evidence against them was so clear. A number of the men are members of the opposition Islamist Popular Congress (PCP), whose leader Hassan Al Turabi was jailed last September after the authorities accused his party of plotting to overthrow the government.

Attorney General Mohammad Farid said Turabi would be released with all other political prisoners as soon as emergency law was lifted in Sudan — probably after the promulgation of a new constitution around May. The 72 men, whose trial will begin on April 2 nd, had confessed to a legal committee in his office to plotting to overthrow the government. They are charged with waging war against the state.

Farid expected a death sentence, but stressed that this would be up to the court to decide. His office would not make a specific recommendation to the court. He said no one had been executed for any crime since he took office in 1995. Most convictions for political crimes have resulted in prison sentences and most of the prisoners were released before they served the full sentence.

Farid had personally listened to the confessions of the accused, who led investigators to five arms caches in various parts of Khartoum. He denied there was any torture, as the defendants claim. “They were eating and drinking and praying with us here ... There was no evidence of any torture or beating.” In the case of Shamseddin Idriss, whose death certificate showed broken limbs and a blow to the head after his detention by state security forces before any charges were brought against him, a committee is investigating the matter.

Most of the 72 were members of the PCP, though the party denies this. It claims that only a few are PCP members, while most of them are boys from Sudan's western Darfur region. However, Farid insisted that all the leadership is from the PCP. Its leader, Turabi, is still in jail without charge. Farid said this might continue for as long as state security forces felt was necessary. There was not enough evidence to link Turabi directly to the attempted coup in September or another one in March 2004, but state security had information that he was planning a coup.