They'll Help Investigate Death Of Vice President

Less than a month after a delegation led by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was roughed up by political bodyguards in Sudan, a team of NTSB investigators arrived in Africa Monday to look into a helicopter mishap that claimed the live of that country's vice president.

"The group is here, they arrived yesterday, but they haven’t worked out a final schedule yet," an embassy official in Nairobi, Kenya, told the French news agency AFP. "They will be investigating the crash as the NTSB does and has done in other incidents like this."

As  ANN reported August 1st, the Ugandan presidential Mi-172 helicopter was flying Vice President John Garang (below) back to southern Sudan from Entebbe when it went down in mountains and bad weather. Thirteen other people died in the mishap.

At first, most authorities agreed the mishap was probably caused by a combination of poor weather and high terrain. Even so, the crash sparked two days of rioting that left dozens of Sudanese dead.

Now, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni says the mishap could have been caused by "an external factor" and suggested the cause was unclear. That opened the door to US investigators -- and the possibility that Garang and the other victims were murdered.

Garang, a Sudanese rebel leader in the southern part of the country for more than two decades, was only recently made vice president. His appointment was supposed to help end a civil war that has raged on in that country since the 1980s. As NTSB investigators sift through the wreckage, they'll also be sifting through Sudan's political fortunes.

FMI: www.ntsb.gov