"The Islamist intellectual Hassan al-Turabi has died," it said, before broadcasting verses from the Koran.
At the height of his power, he was credited with building Africa`s first Islamic state and turning Khartoum into a terrorist hub.
In recent years he had become one of the fiercest critics of President Omar al-Bashir`s repressive regime and had been jailed repeatedly.
However, in 1989 he was close to the then army general who lead a military coup to topple Sadiq al-Mahdi, the prime minister.
Although he was imprisoned soon after, it was a ruse to allow one of the country`s leading Islamist thinkers to develop the Sharia architecture of Mr Bashir`s government in secret.
He set up the Popular Arab and Islamic Conference as part of an attempt to reconcile Sunnis and Shias, unite Islam and develop an alternative world order to the US-led version.
In practice, it became a front for terrorist groups.
The Palestinian Liberation Order, Hamas and Egyptian Islamic Jihad were among the groups hosted by Mr Turabi as he pursued his dream.
Bin Laden arrived in 1991 before Khartoum expelled him five years later under US pressure.
For years afterwards, Mr Turabi`s son looked after one of the al-Qaeda leaders horses.
But he always denied that he had invited Bin Laden or hosted terrorists.
“Most of them were post-Afghan people, some of their countries refused to receive them back. So, some of them came to Sudan because they thought they could get a job here,” he said in an interview in 2008. “Some of them were doctors, so they could get work in any place, actually.”
Ayman al-Zawahiri, the former surgeon who is now the leader of al-Qaeda, was among Sudan`s guests as the country became a pariah state.
Mr Turabi eventually fell out with Mr Bashir in an internal power struggle for control of the National Congress Party in 1999. Periods of house arrest and time in jail followed.
He spoke fluent English - after taking a masters in law from King`s College London and a doctorate from the Sorbonne in Paris - and in his later years he would entertain visiting journalists with a quick sense of humour and titbits of political gossip.
He was widely believed to be a crucial influence – if not a controlling force – on one band of Darfur rebels, the Justice and Equality Movement.
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