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| Africa Horn |
| 4 Sudanese men accused of killing U.S. aid worker and his driver |
| 2008-09-23 |
| (SomaliNet) A court in Sudanese capital Khartoum heard on Sunday that four Sudanese men accused of killing a U.S. aid worker and his driver in a New Year's Eve attack were plotting to murder another foreigner when they were arrested. According to press reports, the four are charged with murdering John Granville, a 33-year-old officer with the U.S. Agency for International Development, and his driver Abdelrahman Abbas Rahama, 39, in Khartoum in the early hours of Jan. 1. Granville was the first U.S. government official to be killed in Khartoum in more than three decades in a crime that sent shockwaves through the capital's expatriate community. The Sudanese court watched pre-recorded videos of the four admitting to their part on the crime, two of them saying they fired the fatal shots with a 9mm pistol and a Kalashnikov rifle. The four men had said in an earlier hearing that the video-taped confessions were made under police torture. In the videoed statements, one of the defendants Abdel Basit al-Hajj Hassan, 29, said they had spotted Granville in a U.S. embassy vehicle, drove up alongside him and opened fire. "With the help of God we killed the American infidel," he said in the statement. He said he fired six rounds with the Kalashnikov. "It all took 12 to 15 seconds.". After the killing, the four took refuge in the northern town of Atbara, before returning to Khartoum to plan the killing of another foreigner, the court heard him say on the video. Abdelrahim Ahmed Abdelrahim, police's chief investigator in the case, told the court officers arrested the men in Khartoum after tracing e-mails they sent to each other after the attack. In earlier hearings, prosecuting lawyers said the men were religious extremists who had decided to attack foreigners in Sudan. The men had originally planned to attack Americans gathered at New Year's Eve parties in the capital. But after finding the venues either empty or heavily guarded they decided to target individuals driving home from celebrations. A fifth man facing the same charge admitted in his video-taped statement supplying the four others with weapons, but denied knowing anything about their plans. |
| Posted by:Fred |