A SUDAN Airways flight to London was delayed on Sunday by a bomb hoax that a friend of opposition leader Sadek al-Mahdi apparently made to enable Mahdi to catch the flight, police said. Mohamed Khalil Ibrahim admitted during interrogation that he telephoned the airport with a bomb threat to enable a “friend” to catch the flight, police said. An unnamed police source said that the “friend” was indeed Mahdi, a former prime minister who is the leader of the Umma Party and who was running late for his flight to London, on his way to the United States. Ibrahim was quoted by an Umma Party source as saying he alerted the airport authorities that he had earlier in the day received an anonymous telephone call that there was a bomb on the plane. The plane took off after a two-hour delay following its evacuation and a search, which turned up no explosives, airline officials said. Umma Party sources said Mahdi was aboard the plane when it eventually took off. Ibrahim, who edited a private newspaper in the 1980s, was released after questioning and ordered to reappear before prosecutors on Monday to answer charges related to the bomb hoax. – AFP