Sudan close to solving murder of US official
April 30, 2008 (KHARTOUM) — The Sudanese interior ministry announced today that they are close to solving the murder of a US diplomat in Khartoum on New Years eve.
The head of the bureau for criminal investigation in the ministry Major General Abdeen Al-Tahir told the government sponsored Sudanese Media Center (SMC) that the investigation into the killing “is almost complete”.
Al-Tahir said that the case would be sent to the ministry of Justice “within the next two weeks”.
The slain officer named John Granville, 33, was working for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in Sudan. He was working to implement a 2005 peace agreement between Sudan’s north and south that ended more than two decades of civil war, USAID said.
Granville was shot and killed along with his driver last January by gunmen in a passing car who cut him off and opened fire before fleeing the scene as he was being driven home in Sudan’s capital.
There has been conflicting reports on the motives behind the killing. Sudanese officials ruled out the any terrorist links. It was also mentioned that the USAID official got into an argument during the new years party after which he left angrily.
Last February Sudanese authorities arrested two suspects after an exchange of fire that led to some injuries before they were taken into custody but their names were not released.
The New York Times quoted an unidentified law enforcement official as saying that one of two men arrested is a Sudanese army officer. He said that the latter was the ringleader of a small cell of terrorists, and was not acting on behalf of the Sudanese government.
Al-Tahir said that there are a total of five suspects in the case and stressed that “they are all Sudanese”.
“There are no terrorist ties to the incident. The group that carried out the attack is small and isolated with extremist views” he said.
The cell is believed to have been formed last year after Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, vehemently rejected the idea of a United Nations peacekeeping mission to Darfur.
US officials have grown frustrated at the slow pace of the investigation into the killing. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) sent a team to assist their Sudanese counterparts.
Last week the US presidential contender Barack Obama issued a statement on reports of negotiations between Washington and Khartoum to normalize ties. Obama said that “Khartoum has yet to fully account for the murder of John Granville”.
Granville is the first U.S. diplomat to be killed in Sudan since the 1973 assassination of U.S. Ambassador Cleo Noel, slain along with senior embassy officer George Curtis Moore by the Palestinian Black September militant group
(ST)