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KHARTOUM - Five members of a Sudanese opposition group chaired by Islamist dissident Hassan al-Turabi ended a week-long hunger strike after authorities promised to hear their case after a prolonged detention, a group official said Sunday.

Five out of 10 members of the Popular National Congress (PNC) held in Khartoum's Cooper Prison went on hunger strike on March 17 and ended it Saturday, after authorities agreed to meet their demands.

One of the hunger strikers, Zuhair Ibrahim, had to be hospitalized, PNC legal affairs secretary Mohammed al-Hassan al-Amin told Nampa-AFP.

The five went on strike because they had been in detention since October, whereas Sudanese law only allowed a suspect to be held in preventative detention without trial for up to four months.

Security forces said they would hear the PNC members' cases and "take appropriate decisions," Amin said.

He said the authorities had also dropped plans to transfer the detained to prisons outside Khartoum and granted authorisation for their families to visit them in jail.

Al-Amin added that four other PNC members were arrested last week, without providing further details.

Group leader Turabi and a number of other PNC members were arrested in February 2001 for agreeing on a memorandum of understanding with the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA).

While some of his aides were freed last October, Turabi was moved from Cooper Prison and placed under house arrest in a suburb of the Sudanese capital. - Nampa-AFP

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