Sudan should probe rebel leader’s death- Machar

January 6, 2008 (JUBA) — An investigation into a helicopter crash that killed south Sudan’s first president John Garang should be re-opened to clear up doubts over his death, the region’s Vice President Riek Machar has said.

Machar told Reuters in an interview late on Saturday that many top officials in the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) believed their former rebel leader had been murdered.

“When we look at such a situation it may be best for us in the SPLM to reopen the investigation so that once and for all we put it to rest,” said Machar. “We do not want anything connected to Dr. John Garang to divide our party.”

Garang was travelling in a helicopter owned by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni in July 2005 when it crashed into a hill in southern Sudan, killing all 14 passengers.

The former leader’s death, three weeks after he took office as part of a peace deal to end Africa’s longest civil war, sparked the worst riots in Khartoum’s recent history, killing more than 100 people.

A joint Ugandan-Sudanese report into the incident released in 2006 blamed pilot error and poor weather.

But the SPLM has still not released an official position on the report, said Machar. “Truly I have not seen a resolution that endorses the report neither at the level of the party nor at the government level.”

He said experts in plane crashes should be brought in from overseas to open a new investigation.

Machar said officials including the party’s Secretary General Pagan Amum, Sudan’s Foreign Minister Deng Alor and Aleu Ayeny Aleu — a top SPLM member who was part of the investigation team but disagreed with its findings — had expressed doubts about the crash.

Garang’s widow Rebecca Nyandeng Garang — then a minister in the south — told a crowd at an award ceremony honouring her husband in Nairobi that she believed he had been assassinated. She offered no evidence for her accusation.

Machar is also the chief mediator of peace talks held in Juba between the Ugandan Government and the Ugandan rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). The negotiations have been troubled by walk-outs, wrangling over a ceasefire and media reports of the killing of LRA second in command Vincent Otti.

Machar said the LRA delegation was due to return to Juba next week, but he was waiting for confirmation of Otti’s fate.

“I want the confirmation to come from Joseph (Kony, LRA leader). The officers that I met tended to suggest that he is not there, that he is dead,” said Machar.

Sudan’s north-south conflict — separate from fighting in Darfur — killed 2 million people and forced another 4 million to evacuate their homes.

(Reuters)