Sudanese court starts trial for US diplomat assassins
August 17, 2008 (KHARTOUM) — Five suspects appeared in court in Sudan on Sunday in connection with the New Year’s Day murder of a US diplomat and his driver that sent shockwaves through the Western community in Khartoum.
Judge Said Ahmed al-Badri read out the names and ages of the five bearded Sudanese men, aged between 23 and 35, who sat in the dock in traditional white gowns, at one point smiling and chatting among themselves.
He then adjourned legal proceedings until August 31, asking the families of both victims to appoint a lawyer, either a Sudanese or American provided they spoke Arabic.
John Granville, 33, who worked for the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and his 40-year-old Sudanese driver Abdel Rahman Abbas were hit in their car by a hail of bullets before dawn on New Year’s Day.
Among those in the dock was a 23-year-old son of the head of Ansar al-Sunna, a pacifist Muslim sect in Sudan that has no political affiliations but has links to the orthodox Wahhabi sect dominant in Saudi Arabia.
The others were listed as an engineering student, a merchant and a former security officer from Khartoum and a driver from Atbara, in northern Sudan.
The suspects proclaimed loudly in Arabic “Peace Be Upon You” upon arrival and asked that they be allowed to perform their prayers on Fridays, the Muslim day of rest.
Federal Bureau of Investigation officers from the United States helped to investigate the killings.
Although it was not clear whether the suspects belonged to a specific group, a group calling itself Ansar al-Tawhid claimed the killing in a statement posted on a militant website on January 4.
The organisation said the attack was in response to attempts to raise the banner of Christianity over Sudan, according to the US-based SITE intelligence group which monitors Islamist websites.
SITE did not give more details about the group, whose claim could not be authenticated. But variations of its name, which means “Partisans of Oneness” (of God), have been used by Islamist extremists abroad, including in Iraq.
Relations between Sudan and the United States are largely strained, most recently over the five-year conflict in the African country’s western region of Darfur where Washington has accused Khartoum of genocide.
Granville was killed one day after US President George W. Bush signed a law encouraging divestment from companies which do business in Sudan in an effort to up economic pressure on Khartoum over Darfur.
According to the United Nations, up to 300,000 people have died and more than 2.2 million have fled their homes since the conflict between the Arab regime and ethnic rebels erupted in 2003. Sudan says 10,000 have been killed.
Sudan and the United States, which has no ambassador in Khartoum, earlier this year held talks in a bid to improve their diplomatic relations.
Sudan is hoping to be removed from the US list of state sponsors of terror, which includes Iran and North Korea, and for Washington to lift economic sanctions which predate, but are also related to, the Darfur conflict.
USAID is the leading international donor to Sudan and has contributed more than two billion dollars for humanitarian programmes in the country, including Darfur, and in eastern Chad across the border since 2004.
(AFP)