Sudan opposition leader Yasir Arman detained

A Sudanese opposition leader who returned from exile after the overthrow of president Omar Al-Bashir was arrested today, his organisation said, reports Reuters.

Yasir Arman, the deputy head of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) group, came back last month and joined other opposition groups meeting the military leaders who ousted Al-Bashir, according to local media reports.

But those talks ground to a halt, then fell apart all together after security forces raided a protest camp in central Khartoum on Monday.

Arman was detained by security services at his house in Khartoum, a spokesman for his group said, without giving any details on the reasons.

READ: UK envoy to Sudan meets SPLM leaders

No one was immediately available to comment from the security services.

Arman had been sentenced to death in absentia for his part in a rebellion against Al-Bashir’s government that started in the Sudanese state of Blue Nile in 2011.

SPLM-N includes many fighters who sided with South Sudanese rebels in decades of civil war fuelled by ethnicity, oil, and ideology that ended in a 2005 peace deal.

But they were left inside Sudan when that agreement paved the way to the secession of South Sudan in 2011.