Sudanese army officer among suspects over US official’s murder

February 12, 2008 (NEW YORK) — One of two men arrested Saturday in connection with the killing of a U.S. diplomat in Sudan last month is a Sudanese Army officer, a senior Sudanese law enforcement official said Monday, The New York Times reported in its Tuesday editions.

According to the Sudanese official, the army officer was the ringleader of a small cell of terrorists, and was not acting on behalf of the Sudanese government.

The Times reports that the gunmen killed John Granville, a U.S. diplomat working on aid projects for the Agency for International Development, to send a message to the U.S. government, which has been highly critical of the way Sudan has handled the crisis in Darfur, the official said. He was not authorized to speak publicly about what he called a “very secret” investigation.

“These guys didn’t like Americans or British people,” said the law enforcement official. He further said the two suspects, including the army officer, had been formally accused. Three others are in detention under investigation.

The paper reports that according to a second Sudanese official, who was also not authorized to speak publicly, the cell was formed last year after Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, vehemently rejected the idea of a United Nations peacekeeping mission to Darfur. The cell included operatives from other Arab countries, the second official said, and it planned to attack U.S. and U.K. officials in Sudan.

John Granville, a 33-year-old officer with the U.S. Agency for International Development, was killed by gunmen while returning home from New Year celebrations in Khartoum on January 1. His driver, Abdelrahman Abbas Rahama, 39, was also killed.

Days after the attack, a previously unknown group calling itself Ansar al-Tawhid (Companions of Monotheism) in Sudan, posted a message on a Web site used by militants claiming responsibility for the killings.

In August, Sudanese security services said they had broken up a plot to attack the French, British, U.S. and U.N. diplomatic missions in Khartoum. The group was discovered in a Khartoum house after explosives went off by accident.

At the time, authorities said they had seized weapons and arrested most of the plotters, although a number had managed to get away.

(ST)