Sudan seeks to end terror designation in settlement

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 show that $70 million will be split among families of 17 people killed, as well as 15 sailors who were wounded 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-Qaeda, 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 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 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.