Sudan murder suspects used Saudi cash: investigator (Reuters)
26 minutes ago
KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Four Sudanese men accused of killing a U.S. aid worker funded the murder with a donation from a Saudi Arabian man and money left over from a failed bomb plot, the Sudanese police's chief investigator told a court on Monday.
The four men 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.
Both were shot dead while returning home from New Year's Eve celebrations in Khartoum early on January 1 in a crime that shocked westerners in the capital, previously seen as one of Africa's safest cities.
One of the four defendants, the son of a well known Islamic preacher in Sudan, received a donation of 35,000 riyals ($9,300) from a Saudi man called Al Naim, the Sudanese police's chief investigator told Khartoum North court on Monday.
Al Naim told the defendant to use the money to launch a jihad against westerners in Somalia, investigator Abdelrahim Ahmed Abdelrahim said.
But the defendant, Abdel Raouf Abu Zaid Mohamed, instead decided to use the money to target Americans who he thought were trying to spread Christianity in Sudan, the investigator said.
The investigator said members of the group also used 9,000 Sudanese pounds ($4,300) left over from a failed bomb plot against western embassies in Khartoum.
In earlier hearings, the prosecutor said the four suspects had used the money for logistics and to buy weapons.
The court also watched in earlier hearings videos of the four suspects confessing to the murder, two of them saying they had fired the fatal shots. In court, the men retracted the confessions, saying they had been made under torture.
A fifth man facing the same murder charge admitted in his video-taped statement supplying the four others with weapons, but denied knowing anything about their plans.
The hearing was adjourned until October 14.
(Reporting by Khaled Abdelaziz, writing by Andrew Heavens, editing by Tim Pearce)
