By Khalid Abdel Aziz
Khartoum - Four Sudanese men were on Wednesday condemned to hang for killing a US aid official and his driver in Khartoum, and a fifth man was jailed.
John Granville, from the US Agency for International Development, was the first US government official killed in Khartoum in more than three decades in a crime that sent shockwaves through the capital's expatriate community.
Granville, 33, from near Buffalo, New York, and his driver Abdelrahman Abbas Rahama, 39, were shot as they returned from New Year's celebrations in the early hours of Jan. 1, 2008.
"We sentence the first four defendants to death by hanging," Judge Sayed Ahmed al-Badri said as the guilty verdicts on their murder charges were announced amid tight security.
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A fifth defendant, who admitted helping some men buy guns, was sentenced to two years in jail on weapons charges.
In earlier hearings, prosecution lawyers and witnesses had described them as "religious extremists" who had plotted to kill Americans they blamed for the introduction of international peacekeepers into Sudan's Darfur region.
The US embassy in Khartoum urged its citizens to stay away from the downtown court, warning that a group called "al Qaeda in the Land between the Two Niles" had mentioned Granville's murder in a statement and threatened to kill more Americans.
The verdict was greeted by cheers of "God is Greatest, long live justice" by Rahama's family, which had asked for a death sentence in line with Islamic law that gives families of murder victims a say in the sentencing.
Lawyers representing Granville's mother Jane read out a letter saying she preferred the killers be jailed for life for their crimes, but that was not presented as a possibility.
"It is with a heavy heart that I have to conclude that I am left with no other option. The death penalty is the only sentence that will protect others from those who took my beloved son's life," read the statement, seen by Reuters.
Jane Granville said her son spent his last minutes alive in hospital repeatedly asking doctors what had happened to Rahama.
"It was such a privilege to watch my only son grow into the unselfish humanitarian he became," she wrote.
The four defendants who were condemned to hang had denied murdering Granville, saying video-taped confessions shown to the court were extracted under torture.
The prosecution said the defendants set out to find New Year's Eve parties and kill guests as they left.
Lawyers said the men, all in their 20s and 30s, spotted the US diplomatic plates on Granville's vehicle and opened fire when it stopped in the Riyadh area of the capital.
Lawyers said the four shouted Islamic slogans after the killing. The men ignored an order from the judge to stand while their sentences were read out in court and showed no response.
The prosecution said defendants Mohamed Makkawi Ibrahim Mohamed and Abdel Basit al-Hajj Hassan fired the shots that killed Rahama and Granville.
Prosecution statements said the third defendant Mohamed Osman Yusuf Mohamed, a former army officer, was the driver of the attackers' vehicle while Abdel Raouf Abu Zaid Mohamed, the son of a well known Islamic preacher, was a passenger.
Additional reporting by Andrew Heavens
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