Senior southern figures arrested as Sudan bans rally

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Riot police arrested three senior members of south Sudan's main political party and more than 100 supporters who demonstrated outside Sudan's parliament on Monday despite an official ban, witnesses and officials said.

Yasir Arman, a senior member of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), scuffled with police outside the National Assembly and was driven away to a police station, where other demonstrators gathered, a Reuters witness said.

The SPLM released a statement saying its Secretary General Pagan Amum and Sudan's state minister for interior Abbas Juma, an SPLM member, were also arrested.

The SPLM is junior partner in the national coalition government formed by a 2005 peace deal that ended more than two decades of civil war between Sudan's north and south.

The SPLM and opposition parties had called the rally to demand democratic reforms ahead of next year's elections in a rare public challenge to President Omar Hassan al-Bashir's dominant northern National Congress Party (NCP). Sudanese authorities announced on Sunday that the rally was banned.

Police beat protesters and onlookers outside parliament with batons as Arman was driven away with other SPLM members chanting "freedom".

Hundreds more banner-waving supporters gathered in the area and other parts of Khartoum's Omdurman suburb after the arrests and were dispersed by police using tear gas through the morning.

"The situation is brutal. More than 100 SPLM members have been arrested and many more other protesters have been detained," SPLM spokeswoman Keji Roman told Reuters.

After the arrests, south Sudan's president Salva Kiir contacted president Bashir, who promised to release all prisoners, said SPLM member Anne Itto. No one was immediately available for comment from the presidency.

Itto said the news sparked anger in the south, where attackers set fire to the NCP's headquarters in Wau, the capital of Western Bahr el Ghazal state. She had no reports of injuries.

Senior NCP official Ibrahim Ghandour told Reuters the protest had not been banned by his party, but by Sudan's Interior Ministry which declared it illegal because organisers had failed to apply for permission to hold the event.

"The National Congress Party is not against democratic action including protests and rallies," he said. "We hope the people will be released immediately."

An official in the opposition Umma party had said on Sunday the ban showed the NCP was not serious about letting dissenting voices take part in elections, scheduled for April 2010.

The oil-producing country is to hold its first multi-party polls in 24 years under the 2005 peace deal that created the SPLM-NCP coalition government.

Relations between the former foes have stayed tense and both have accused each other of failing to implement the deal, which guarantees the south a referendum on independence in 2011.

Two million people were killed and 4 million fled their homes between 1983 and 2005 as Sudan's north and south battled over differences of ideology, ethnicity and religion. (Additional reporting by Khaled Abdel Aziz in Khartoum and Skye Wheeler in Juba; Editing by Giles Elgood)