He was brought to the hospital’s intensive care unit early on Saturday after losing consciousness at his office.
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According to State-run TV, Al-Turabi passed away at the Royal Care International Hospital in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital.
Mr. Turabi was a key ally of President al Bashir when he took power in a coup in 1989 but they fell out about a decade later. He died of cardiac arrest, state TV said, citing an obituary from the presidency.
Al-Turabi, he added, would be buried in Khartoum on Sunday morning.
Veteran Sudan Islamist opposition leader Hassan al-Turabi, one of the fiercest critics of President Omar al-Bashir’s government, died of a heart attack on Saturday aged 84, officials said.
An ideologue with influence beyond Sudan’s borders, Turabi was one of the driving forces behind the introduction of Islamic sharia law in Sudan in 1983, which sparked a devastating 22-year civil war with the mainly Christian, African south that cost an estimated two million lives.
He was detained several times over his political career, including in January 2009, just two days after he urged Bashir to surrender to the ICC.
Since the 2005 peace deal which led to full independence in July 2011 for South Sudan, Turabi repeatedly warned of the wider disintegration of the largest nation in Africa and the Arab world.
He graduated from Khartoum University School of Law and also studied in London and at the Sorbonne in Paris, where he gained a doctorate.
He spoke English, French and German fluently as well as Arabic.
Al-Turabi championed radical Islam in the 1990s, inviting bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahri to Sudan, which became a safe haven for jihadists.
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He played a crucial role in designing the new government’s Islamic policies, was elected speaker of the National Assembly in 1996 and in 1998, was elected secretary-general of the ruling National Congress Party (NCP).
