He has been seen as the most influential and powerful figure in modern Sudanese politics, Hassan Al-Turabi, the religious and Islamist political leader and the founder of Popular Congress Party (PCP). Turabi was born on 1 February 1932 in Kassala, northern Sudan, where he received an Islamic education. In 1951, he came to Khartoum to study law and joined the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). He graduated from Khartoum University School of Law and gained PhD from the Sorbonne in Paris. At home, he became a leader of the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood in the early 1960s. After a short period, he became the group's secretary general. In 1969, Gaafar Nimeiry assumed power in a coup. The members of Sudan's MB were arrested, and Al-Turabi spent six years in custody and three in exile in Libya. After a national reconciliation agreement with the regime, opposition leaders were freed and allowed back from exile, including Al-Turabi. In 1977, he became a leader of the Sudanese Socialist Union, and was promoted to Minister of Justice in 1979. In 1983, the Nimeiry government imposed harsh legislations based on Sharia law. Popular opposition protested against Nimeiry's political actions and the brutal application of Shariah law. In 1985, the Sudanese regime was ousted by a coup. In 1989, Col. Omar Hassan al-Bashir led a military coup against the government of Prime Minister Sadiq Al-Mahdi. Al-Turabi was a close ally of President Bashir throughout the 1990s, serving as his foreign minister just after the coup that brought Bashir to power. He was elected speaker of parliament in 1996. Many observers have considered him as the intellectual and ideological leader of Sudan. In 1999, following differences between him and Bashir, Al-Turabi formed the PCP, taking on an opposition role that landed him in jail several times. After the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against Al-Bashir in 2009, Al-Turabi called on Bashir to surrender himself, being politically responsible for war crimes in Darfur. He was then arrested and held in prison for two months before being released due to his bad health. On March 5, 2016, the prominent Sudanese politician has died in Khartoum at the age of 84, from heart attack when he was working in his office.
