Sudanese opposition assert production of chemical weapons in El-Shefaa factory
Sudan, Politics, 8/26/1998

Sources in the Sudanese opposition confirmed yesterday that the El-Shefaa factory, destroyed last week by US attacks, was producing chemical weapons.

Mubarak El-Mahdi, the secretary-general of the opposition Democratic National Assembly (DNA), said that what is repeated by the government in Sudan concerning the factory's specialization in producing medicines is incorrect. He added in a statement from Asmara, the Eritrean capital which hosts the headquarters of the DNA, that the factory is producing components for chemical weapons in addition to manufacturing medicine.

Mahdi stated that, "The government owns the factory and it works within a program that comprises another units in Kanouri area of Khartoum," and the ruling Islamic front and its official bodies supervise this program with Iraq's support and the support of some of the extremist fronts headed by Osama Bin Laden.

He added that the work in the program is conducted by Iraqi, Asian and Eastern European experts."

Sudanese opposition members in Cairo said that their movements gave the US information on targets in Khartoum specialized in military production, including al-Shifaa factory which was destroyed by the US military strikes last Thursday.

One of the Sudanese Communist Party's leaders, al-Tayeb al-Teijani, said in an interview in Cairo published on Monday by the Jordanian daily al-Arab al-Youm that the name of al-Shifaa factory was mentioned in the talks about military production according to information "we received from the opposition inside Sudan a long time prior to the US military strike. And we revealed that to the whole world."

Al-Teijani elaborated that the Sudanese opposition was the first to determine training sites and centers which shelter terrorists.

Chairman of the Sudanese Ummah Party and Sudan's former Prime Minister al-Sadeq al-Mahdi, told the same paper that there are other sites in addition to al-Shifaa factory which arouse concern and doubt in various parts of Sudan.

Meanwhile, the Arab Organization for Human Rights expressed yesterday in a press statement its anxiety over the US military's shelling of a Sudanese medicine factory and an Afghan complex.

The organization asked the UN Security Council to condemn this aggression and respond to the Sudanese call to send a fact-finding mission to Khartoum to reveal the truth about the nature of the factory as well as committing the U.S. to compensate the victims.

The organization had condemned this attack in a previous statement and described it as state terrorism.

Previous Stories:
  Sudan asks Egypt to send scientific delegation to bombed medicine factory   (8/25/1998)
  Egypt FM confers with al-Mahdi   (8/25/1998)
  Sudan expects more attacks, Bombed factory asks US to admit error   (8/24/1998)

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