WASHINGTON: US lawmakers on Monday backed legislation granting Sudan legal immunity for past militant attacks, a final step in a historic deal removing Khartoum from Washington’s blacklist of state sponsors of terrorism.
The text restores Sudan’s sovereign immunity with the exception of litigation already pending in US federal courts related to the September 11, 2001 attacks, and earmarks hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to Khartoum.
The legislation was part of the massive omnibus bill to fund the government for the coming year, which is also due to include a new aid package to help millions of Americans and businesses hit hard by the pandemic.
Sudan was removed from the US state sponsors of terrorism blacklist a week ago, less than two months after the Arab nation pledged to normalise ties with Israel. The move also promises aid, debt relief and investment to a country going through a rocky political transition and struggling under a severe economic crisis exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
As part of a deal, Sudan agreed to pay $335 million to compensate survivors and victims’ families from the 1998 Al Qaeda twin attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and a 2000 attack by the militant group on the USS Cole off Yemen’s coast.
Those attacks were carried out after now ousted president Omar al Bashir gave then Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden sanctuary in Sudan.
Adoption of the legislation is a key, final step to unblocking the money, which Sudan has already put in an escrow account.
Sudan’s justice ministry on Tuesday hailed the US move as a “great event”.
It “effectively means the end, once and for all, of the repercussions of a dark period in the history of its (Sudan’s) relations with the United States and the world,” the ministry said in a statement. — AFP
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