Ḥasan al-Turābī

Ḥasan al-Turābī (born 1932, Kassala, Sudan—died March 5, 2016, Khartoum) was a Sudanese Muslim religious scholar and lawyer. After receiving a law degree at Gordon Memorial College (later the University of Khartoum)—where, in the early 1950s, he joined the Sudanese branch of the Muslim Brotherhood—he pursued graduate studies at the University of London and the Sorbonne in Paris. While teaching law at the University of Khartoum, he participated in the 1964 revolution that ended military rule. He later served in the national legislature (1965–67). He supported the 1985 overthrow of Gaafar Mohamed el-Nimeiri. That same year he formed the National Islamic Front (NIF), an incarnation of the Muslim Brotherhood. In 1989 the NIF supported a coup that brought ʿUmar Ḥasan al-Bashīr to power. He later served as speaker of the National Assembly (1996–99), but political hostilities between Turābī and Bashīr led to the dissolution of parliament and a subsequent power struggle. Turābī was arrested and imprisoned in 2001; although he was freed in October 2003, he was arrested over an alleged coup plot several months after his release and held until mid-2005. Conflict with Bashīr persisted thereafter, and Turābī continued to experience periodic arrests and detainment in the years that followed.