Sudan speaks about progress on probe of US diplomat’s death
January 6, 2008 (KHARTOUM) — Sudanese authorities are cooperating with FBI agents sent to investigate the fatal shooting of an American diplomat, and the two have made progress in determining who was behind the attack, the official Sudanese news agency reported Sunday.
The agency, SUNA, quoted unnamed officials as saying a team of FBI agents were working in “full cooperation” with a Sudanese investigation committee into the death of John Granville, an official who worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development.
“Investigations have made considerable progress in revealing some important lines that could lead to the apprehension of the culprits,” SUNA quoted the official as saying.
Granville was being driven home around 4 a.m. Jan. 1 when his car was cut off by another vehicle and came under fire, according to the Sudanese Interior Ministry. Granville was hit by five bullets and died after surgery. His driver, Abdel-Rahman Abbas, was also killed.
SUNA also downplayed a message from a previously unknown militant group, which claimed in a chat room on a Web site commonly used by militants that it was responsible for Granville’s death. The claim, purportedly from a group calling itself Ansar al-Tawhid, or Companions of Monotheism, was posted last week in the discussion forum of the Web site, not as an official statement on the site.
“Such a statement would not deter the committee from its main mission, which is the apprehension of the culprits, considering there is a precedent in regard to the falsehood of such statements,” SUNA quoted the official as saying.
Sudanese officials have insisted the shooting was not a terrorist attack. The U.S. Embassy said it was too soon to determine the motive.
USAID said Granville, 33, was working to implement a 2005 peace agreement between Sudan’s north and south that ended more than two decades of civil war separate from the conflict in Darfur.
Granville’s killing was the first assassination of a U.S. diplomat in Sudan since 1973.
(AP)