Sudan considers charging 5 for US diplomat murder
ICC Note
Islamic extremists who killed John Granville, an American diplomat who was based in Sudan , are to be charged. Anti-western sentiment and Islamic extremism is on the rise in Sudan .
5/1/2008 Sudan (Reuters) – Sudan will decide in two weeks whether to charge five people suspected of murdering a U.S. diplomat and his driver on Jan. 1, state media said on Thursday.
“Those accused of committing this crime are from a small isolated group with extremist views,” he said. The five are all Sudanese. In February, Sudan said it had arrested two Muslim “fundamentalists” in connection with the killings.
John Granville, who worked in the humanitarian aid arm of the U.S. embassy in Khartoum , was shot on his way home from a New Year’s Eve party on the morning of Jan. 1.
They followed the discovery in August of a plat to bomb Western embassies in Khartoum . Many embassies increased their security procedures.
Sudan ‘s government imposed Islamic sharia law in 1983. A 2005 north-south peace deal lifted sharia from the mainly Christian, animist south but it remains in place in Khartoum and the north.
