Imperial Valley Press

Sudan seeks to end terror designatio­n in USS Cole settlement

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CAIRO (AP) — Sudan’s transition­al government said Thursday it has reached a settlement with families of the victims of the 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, a key step in having the U.S. remove Sudan from its list of state sponsors of terrorism so it can rejoin the internatio­nal community after years of exclusion.

Copies of the agreements obtained by The Associated Press show that $70 million will be split among families of 17 people killed, as well as 15 sailors who were injured and two of their spouses. In the agreement, Sudan makes no admission of wrongdoing.

The announceme­nt was the latest in a series of efforts by the interim government to close the book on former President Omar al-Bashir, whose three decades of iron-fisted rule was brought to an end in popular protests last year.

Al-Bashir’s Islamist government promoted policies that ensured Sudan remained a pariah to much of the world. The Internatio­nal Criminal Court has accused him of genocide for his leadership of a scorched-earth campaign in the southern area of Darfur in response to a rebel insurgency there. Up to 300,000 people were killed and 2.7 million were driven from their homes.

But in recent weeks the transition­al government has sought to erase remnants of al-Bashir’s rule so it can heal the country’s battered economy. On Tuesday, it said it would hand him and other Sudanese officials over to the court in The Hague to be tried for war crimes.

Settling the case of the USS Cole would be another big move in Sudan’s rehabilita­tion.

On Oct. 12, 2000, two suicide bombers in a boat detonated their explosives alongside the USS Cole as the U.S. Navy destroyer was refueling in the Yemeni port of Aden. The blast killed 17 sailors and wounded more than three dozen others.

Sudan was accused of providing support to al-Qaida, which claimed responsibi­lity for the attack. Under al-Bashir, the country was designated by Washington as a “state sponsor of terror” for hosting the group’s leader, Osama bin Laden, in the early years of his militant movement.

Observers and Sudanese officials have said the settlement was among the last hurdles faced by Sudan on its path to being removed from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Sudan’s Justice Ministry said the agreement was signed with the victims’ families on Feb. 7.

Faisal Saleh, Sudan’s informatio­n minister and interim government spokesman, told the AP that Justice Minister Nasr-Eddin Abdul-Bari had traveled to Washington to sign the deal.

He said the figures could not be disclosed because the Sudanese government is still in negotiatio­ns to reach settlement­s with families of victims of the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. More than 200 people were killed and more than 1,000 were wounded in those attacks.

But Adam Hall, a lawyer for the families of the victims, said it would provide $70 million to be split among families of the 17 people killed as well as 15 sailors who were injured in the attack. That money is on top of $14 million that was awarded in an earlier case.

He said $30.6 million is dedicated to the families of the dead and $39.4 million goes to those who were injured.

He and the families have been pursuing the case for more than 15 years, Hall said.

“Sudan was finally of the view that it was willing to resolve these cases,” he said.

“There is a huge difference between getting a judgment you may never collect and actually receiving a substantia­l amount of money. ... The fact that we are actually collecting just makes me so happy for the families,” he said.

The new Sudanese rulers maintain they are not responsibl­e for the attack on the USS Cole and that they had negotiated the deal out of their desire “to resolve old terror claims inherited from the ousted regime” of al-Bashir.

The families of the dead and the wounded sailors had sued the Sudanese government in U.S. courts, demanding compensati­on for the country’s role in supporting al-Qaida.

In 2012, a federal judge issued a judgment of nearly $315 million against Sudan, but the U.S. Supreme Court overturned that ruling in March 2019 on the grounds that Sudan had not been properly notified of the lawsuit.

The United States has been looking at whether to remove Sudan’s terror designatio­n “for quite some time,” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters Thursday, but he didn’t offer any indication over when such a change to its status could take place.

Pompeo said that the settlement for USS Cole victims was one of the outstandin­g issues.

Saleh also told the AP that the U.S. administra­tion has set the overhaul of the country’s security apparatus as another condition to remove Sudan from the terror list.

 ?? AP Photo/Dimitri Messi nis ?? In this 2000 file photo, experts in a speed boat examine the damaged hull of the USS Cole at the Yemeni port of Aden after an al-Qaida attack that killed 17 sailors.
AP Photo/Dimitri Messi nis In this 2000 file photo, experts in a speed boat examine the damaged hull of the USS Cole at the Yemeni port of Aden after an al-Qaida attack that killed 17 sailors.

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