CAIRO: Ibrahim Nugud, who spent five decades at the helm of the Sudan's once-powerful communist party, has died in London, the party's spokesman said on Thursday. “The news is confirmed,” Youssef Hussein said, adding that Nugud's body was being returned to Khartoum. Nugud, aged about 80, had been receiving medical treatment in England for an undisclosed illness. He spent much of his leadership underground, beginning his term as party general secretary in 1971 after President Jaafar Nimeiri executed other communist leaders in the wake of a short-lived coup. Nimeiri had used the communists to seize power in 1969. The Sudanese Communist Party had once been considered one of the most influential in the Arab world. The communists resurfaced during a democratic interlude that followed Nimeiri's overthrow in 1985. But they were banned again with other parties after the hard-line Islamist regime of Omar Bashir took power in 1989. Nugud re-emerged in 2005 after more than a decade in hiding. In 2010 he ran unsuccessfully in the country's first multi-party presidential election in more than two decades. The communists have very little support in the country now. Nugud's death once again raises the question of future of the Sudan, which seems to have missed the Arab Spring that swept across North Africa, last year. If and when the Sudan ever has a popular uprising, or will simply see another military coup remains to be seen. BM ShortURL: http://goo.gl/bQ3Bi Tags: Dead, Ibrahim Nugud, Leader Sudan Communist Party Section: Latest News, Sudan
