20091207

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Riot police arrested three senior members of south Sudan's main political party and more than 100 supporters who demonstrated around Sudan's parliament on Monday despite an official ban, witnesses and officials said.

The three men were later released and two -- the Sudan People's Liberation Movement's (SPLM) Secretary General Pagan Amum and his deputy Yasir Arman -- received a hero's welcome at their party's headquarters in downtown Khartoum, according to a Reuters witness.

The SPLM and opposition parties had called the rally to demand democratic reforms ahead of next year's elections in a rare public challenge to President Omar Hassan al-Bashir's dominant northern National Congress Party (NCP).

Sudanese authorities announced on Sunday that the rally was banned.

The SPLM is junior partner in the national coalition government formed by a 2005 peace deal that ended more than two decades of civil war between Sudan's north and south.

Arman was detained after scuffling with police early on Monday outside the parliament, said a Reuters witness. The SPLM later said police also arrested Amum and Sudan's state interior minister Abbas Juma, an SPLM member.

Hundreds more banner-waving supporters gathered in the area and other parts of Khartoum's Omdurman suburb after the arrests and were dispersed by police using tear gas.

"The situation is brutal. More than 100 SPLM members have been arrested and many more other protesters have been detained," SPLM spokeswoman Keji Roman told Reuters.