Sudan's official news agency said Saturday a court had not ordered the release of Islamist leader Hassan al-Turabi, hours after a Turabi lawyer said a ruling had set him free from 19 months in detention. SUNA quoted the head of the constitutional court, Jalal Ali Lutfi, as saying the judge reviewing the case had not reached a decision yet. "The constitutional court denies issuing a decision or instruction releasing Hassan al-Turabi," it said.

The 71-year-old Islamist ideologue was a central figure in the Islamist government set up by President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, but Bashir ended the alliance in 1999 and Turabi was arrested in February 2001.

Ghazi Suleiman, one of the lawyers representing Turabi, said the authorities had taken fright at the ruling setting free a man with a large following in the country.

"They issued an order then they retracted it for political reasons," he told Reuters. Turabi's wife Wisal al-Mahdi said: "They just don't want to release Hassan. That's why they are lying."

Suleiman earlier told Reuters: "They have issued an order releasing him because the maximum time allowed to detain him expired two months ago." Mahdi said lawyers had also informed her that her husband had been ordered released.

Turabi was accused of crimes against the state and detained after signing a controversial deal with the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), the main rebel group in Sudan's 19-year-old civil war. He was initially held in jail and then put under house arrest.

"DEAL DOOMED"

In July, Bashir's government reached an outline deal with the SPLA aimed at ending the war, in which rebels from the mainly animist and Christian south have been fighting for more autonomy from the mainly Muslim, Arabised north.

Speaking by telephone from the house where he is being detained, Turabi told Reuters shortly after the earlier announcement of the release order: "I hear that I have been released by the court, but I wait to see."

Turabi said the government's deal with the SPLA was doomed to failure unless Bashir, who came to power in a military coup in 1989, instituted democratic reforms.

"There is no mention of any democracy in the south or the north. Any deal anywhere in the world should be approved by parliament. But here it is just a deal between two forces," he said.

The outline agreement gives southerners the option to secede in a referendum after a six-year interim period and exempts them from Islamic sharia law. Talks between the two sides on a comprehensive peace deal resumed on August 12 in Kenya.

The SPLA, led by John Garang, launched the latest war in 1983 after a previous peace deal reached in 1972 collapsed.

Turabi said both the government and the SPLA had been pressured into the peace deal by the United States, which has stepped up efforts to end the conflict in Africa's largest country and is an observer at the Kenya peace talks.

"If you force a deal from the outside, unless you maintain safeguards for that deal, once any Sudanese force recovers its balance it will revoke it," Turabi said.

Bashir ordered the release of other members of Turabi's Popular National Congress (PNC) party last year, but Turabi was kept under house arrest. Newspapers said at the time that he was being detained for national security reasons.

PNC colleagues of Turabi said it was not clear if the government would try to keep him under lock and key through another detention order.

PHOTO CAPTION

Sudan's official news agency said Saturday a court had not ordered the release of Islamist leader Hassan al-Turabi, hours after a Turabi lawyer said a ruling had set him free from 19 months in dete