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JUBA, Sudan - An Australian man charged with murder in southern Sudan will stand trial at the end of next week along with two other Kenyans, one of their colleagues and a Kenyan official said today.
George Forbes and the two men, who all work for a Kenyan construction company in the southern Sudanese town of Rumbek, were charged on Tuesday of killing a Ukrainian man who worked as a flight engineer for another firm.
They will appear at court on May 7, one of their colleague told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
The three have been in jail since shortly after the Ukraine national was found hanged from a towel rack at the Kenyan construction company's property.
He was admitted into the compound because several locals were chasing him for reasons that are yet unknown.
Peter Angore, the Kenyan Acting Consular General in Juba, the capital of southern Sudan, said the findings of two independent post mortem reports concluded that the death was suicide. But he said local authorities rejected the results.
"The judge is saying it is murder, and that the post mortem should have been done in Rumbek, but there were no facilities," said Angore.
The details of the charges and the roles of the three suspects remain unclear.
Forbes was put under house arrest for health reasons but was sent back to Rumbek jail after the Tuesday hearing, his colleague said. He added that sanitation at the congested prison was very poor.
Awan Gol, the deputy state governor, said he had seen the body of the Ukrainian man and was suspicious about the towel rack from which he was found hanging.
"It was not a high place where he could hang himself, his knees were on the ground, and his hands on the ground," he said.
- REUTERS
