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SUDAN TO EXECUTE ISLAMISTS FOR KILLING US ENVOY
June 24, 2009: A Khartoum court condemned four Islamists to death for the 2008 killing of a US diplomat and his Sudanese driver.
Judge Said Ahmed al-Badri sentenced the four to be hanged for the murders.
The prosecution said defendants Mohamed Makkawi Ibrahim Mohamed and Abdel Basit al-Hajj Hassan fired the shots that killed driver Abdelrahman Abbas Rahama, 39, and John Granville, 33. Mohamed Osman Yusuf Mohamed, a former army officer, was allegedly the driver of the attackers'
vehicle, while Abdel Raouf Abu Zaid Mohamed was a passenger.
Granville, who worked for the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and his 40-year-old Sudanese driver Abbas were shot dead in their car in Khartoum on January 1, 2008.
A group calling itself Ansar al-Tawhid had claimed the New Year's Day murder according to SITE, a US-based organisation which monitors Islamist websites.
It said the murder was in response to attempts to raise the banner of Christianity over Sudan, the largest country in Africa. (Sources: Afp, swissinfo.ch, 24/06/2009)
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