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Sudan to help FBI on probe into killing of US envoy

US officials carry the flag-covered coffin of US diplomat John Granville at the airport of Khartoum, Sudan, on Thursday. PHOTO: EPA

Sudanese officials have promised to cooperate with a team of four FBI agents sent to probe the fatal shooting of a US diplomat, and the US may send more investigators to assist, the State Department said.

The initial FBI team that arrived on Thursday has secured promises of assistance from Sudanese authorities in their investigation of the killing of John Granville, an official with the US Agency for International Development, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said on Friday.

Granville was being driven home around 4am on Tuesday when his car was cut off by another vehicle and came under fire, according to the Sudanese Interior Ministry. Granville was hit by five bullets and died after surgery. His driver, Abdel-Rahman Abbas, was also killed.

Sudanese officials "have pledged cooperation in piecing together exactly what happened, making sure that the team ... has an opportunity to look at all the evidence, piece it together, put together a picture of exactly what happened that night," McCormack said.

"[John Granville] believed that he was a guest in the country. A friend of mine visited John for three weeks, and she said that is how he treated everyone."

Jane Granville, mother of the late US diplomat John Granville

MORE TO COME

"The team just arrived on the ground. I would expect that they will probably be augmented by others but they have started their work,'' McCormack told reporters. "It's just very early days in terms of the investigation to really determine what happened."

Granville's mother told CNN that her son had loved his posting to Africa, where he worked on conflict mediation and peacekeeping negotiations in Darfur, and never told her he was worried about his safety.

"He believed that he was a guest in the country," Jane Granville said. "A friend of mine visited John for three weeks, and she said that is how he treated everyone."

Funeral services will take place near John Granville's hometown of Buffalo, New York, on Wednesday, a family representative said.

USAID had said Granville, 33, was working to implement a peace agreement made in 2005 between Sudan's north and south that ended more than two decades of civil war separate from the conflict in Darfur.

A group that monitors militant Web sites said on Friday that a message attributing Granville's slaying to a previously unknown militant group has been posted in the chat room of a Web site used by militants.

The SITE Intelligence Group said it could not authenticate the claim, purportedly from a group calling itself Ansar al-Tawhid, or Companions of Monotheism.

The statement was posted in the discussion forum of a Web site commonly used by militants, not as an official statement on the site.

"Because there is a claim of responsibility, we chose to send it out to our subscribers," SITE Institute director Rita Katz said.

Katz said that she had never heard of the group.

NOT TERRORISM?

Sudanese officials insist the shooting was not a terrorist attack. The US embassy said it was too soon to determine the motive.

"It's too early to assign responsibility," said a US intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak publicly on the subject.

Granville's killing was the first assassination of a US diplomat in Sudan since 1973.
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