Australian man in South Sudan convicted of murder
May 22, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — An Australian man was convicted of murder in a Sudanese court over the death of a Ukrainian national found hanged from a towel rack in the southern town of Rumbek, British and Australian officials said on Tuesday.
“The man in question has been convicted but he has not been sentenced,” a British diplomat told Reuters. The British embassy has been providing consular assistance to the man because Australia has no embassy in the country.
The officials said George Forbes was convicted along with two Kenyan co-defendants who all work for a Kenyan construction company in Rumbek where the Ukrainian man’s body was found.
Peter Angore, the Kenyan Acting Consular General in Juba, the capital of southern Sudan, has said the findings of two independent post mortem reports concluded that the death was suicide. But he said local authorities had rejected the results.
A spokesman for Australia’s Foreign Affairs department said he expected that Forbes “will be consulting his legal advisers about the options for an appeal”.
Officials said the court was seeking contact with the Ukrainian man’s family before sentencing Forbes and the two Kenyans, in accordance with Sudanese law.
Australia’s ambassador to Cairo, who is also accredited for Sudan, was on his way to Rumbek to offer consular assistance.
(Reuters)