Australian convicted of murder in Sudan freed on bail
May 29, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — An Australian man convicted of murder in south Sudan has been released on bail pending sentencing after his health was reported to deteriorate in prison, a British diplomat said on Tuesday.
The diplomat said he had been informed of the release by a lawyer familiar with the case. The Australian, George Forbes, could face execution over the death of a Ukrainian man who was found hanged from a towel rack in the southern town of Rumbek.
“They were trying to get him moved to hospital because of the health conditions in the prison,” the diplomat told Reuters, adding that the lawyer told him by telephone from south Sudan that Forbes had now been released on bail.
“I think it was yesterday evening,” said the diplomat, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case. Britain has provided some consular assistance to Forbes because Australia does not have an embassy in Sudan.
Forbes had been sent to a government hospital, where he was in stable condition, and could be transferred to either a U.N. hospital or his company’s compound after having suffered from dehydration and malaria-related kidney problems, the Australian Associated Press reported.
Australian media reports say Forbes is 46.
Forbes and two Kenyan co-defendants, also convicted of murder last week, all work for a Kenyan construction company in Rumbek where the Ukrainian man’s body was found. One official has said a Sudanese man was also convicted in the case.
The Ukrainian man, a flight engineer for another firm, had been admitted into the Kenyan company’s compound because several locals were chasing him for reasons that were unclear, sources close to the case said.
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 the man’s death was suicide. But he said local authorities had rejected the results.
Officials have said the court was seeking contact with the Ukrainian man’s family before sentencing, and that it was possible the men could be spared the death penalty and get a lesser sentence that could include paying compensation money.
Forbes complained during the trial that he had not been allowed to submit evidence that the death was a result of suicide. The family of the Ukrainian man has asked that the matter be dropped, according to Rumbek’s deputy governor.
But a British consular official has said a request to drop the matter needed to be made formally by the Ukrainian embassy in Khartoum.
The Australian and the Kenyans are among a wave of foreigners who have poured in to south Sudan since a 2005 peace deal ended over two decades of north-south civil war, paving the way for reconstruction of its tattered infrastructure.
(Reuters)