Team Sent to Sudan To Probe Envoy's Slaying

The Bush administration is dispatching a joint Diplomatic Security-Federal Bureau of Investigation team to Khartoum to investigate the murder of an American diplomat working to promote democracy and changes in the electoral process in Sudan, John Granville.

Granville, a 33-year-old officer with the U.S. Agency for International Development, was killed along with his Sudanese driver shortly after the ringing in of the New Year on Tuesday. The murder came just hours after President Bush signed the Sudan Accountability and Divestment Act, a measure that attempts to increase economic pressure on the Sudanese government for its role in violence in Darfur.

The subject of Granville's murder was the first topic at yesterday's State Department briefing. The department's spokesman, Sean McCormack, expressed the department's sadness for the death and told of the plans for an investigation that will involve the Sudanese government. "We are taking action to determine, working with the Sudanese government, who is responsible for these murders," Mr. McCormack said. Two groups of investigators, one made up of law enforcement officials based in Africa and another based in Washington, will work on the case, he said. Sudan's Foreign Ministry said yesterday the killing was "isolated and has no political or ideological connotations."

The director of the Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom, Nina Shea, said America was pursuing the wrong policy in dealing so closely with the Sudanese government. "Since it is a police state, this kind of random killing against high level diplomats is not common," Ms. Shea said. "Our policy is based on a very misguided assumption that the government of Sudan means to do good. … This is a thoroughly bad regime."

A senior fellow at the New America Foundation, Peter Bergen, said he suspected the hand of Al Qaeda in the killing. "Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri have often called for attacks in Sudan in past months," Mr. Bergen said. "They see the Darfur operation in the same lens as Somalia in 1992-1993, not as a humanitarian mission but an attempt by the West to take over Muslim lands."

Two-hundred and twenty five foreign service officers have died in the line of duty, the president of the American Foreign Service Association, John Naland, told the Sun. The line of names, dating back to the nation's birth, resides on two plaques at the State Department entrance. "It does show how dangerous it can be serving the U.S. abroad in developing countries," Mr. Naland said, expressing his condolences to the friends and families of both men slain. While his group, which serves as the professional organization and union for America's diplomats, advocates for increased funding for security measures at embassies, he said his line of work involved an unavoidable amount of risk.

"There's a point where if you're going to have people in a place like Sudan, there's going to be a certain amount of danger," he said, noting prior American foreign service casualties in Sudan, such as the former ambassador, Cleo Noel. Noel and another official were killed by Palestinian terrorists with the approval of Yasser Arafat.

The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Joseph Biden, released a statement yesterday calling Granville's "life's work … a tremendous credit to our country." Mr. Biden's office, like those of fellow members of the Foreign Relations Committee, Senators Dodd and Obama, did not provide comment in response to a request seeking an update on the progress of a measure that would force the State Department to update Congress on the status of an investigation in the deaths of three American security contractors in Gaza in 2003 who were killed in an attack on a convoy of American diplomats.