U.S. aid official's killers escape Sudan jail - police

The fugitives broke out through the prison sewer system late Thursday then exchanged fire with police as they fled in a vehicle past a checkpoint west of the Khartoum suburb of Omdurman early Friday, the spokesman said.

The four Sudanese men, described as "Islamic extremists" by the prosecution, were sentenced to death by hanging for the killing of John Granville, of the U.S. Agency for International Development, and his driver, Abdelrahman Abbas Rahama.

Granville, 33, from near Buffalo, New York, and Rahama, 39, were shot as they returned from New Year's celebrations in the early hours of January 1, 2008.

News of the escape is likely to dismay Washington. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton welcomed the guilty verdicts against the four men when they were issued in June 2009 and U.S. President Barack Obama called on Khartoum during his election campaign to account for Granville's murder

"The fugitives exchanged fire with police stationed at a checkpoint at Abu Halif southwest of Omdurman," police spokesman Mohamed Abdul Majeed said in a statement.

Another police spokesman said the men escaped from Khartoum's Kober prison. He said officers at the checkpoint managed to stop the car and arrested a fifth man driving it, but the four fugitives escaped on foot and were still loose.

The United States said it expected Sudan to capture them.

"The United States government expects that Sudanese authorities will apprehend these convicted murderers and ensure that justice is served for the men killed and their families," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters in Washington.

The prosecution said defendants Mohamed Makkawi Ibrahim Mohamed and Abdel Basit al-Hajj Hassan fired the fatal shots.

Prosecution statements said the third defendant, Mohamed Osman Yusuf Mohamed, a former army officer, was the driver of the attackers' vehicle, while Abdel Raouf Abu Zaid Mohamed, the son of a well-known Islamic preacher, was a passenger.

Days after the attack, a previously unknown group calling itself Ansar al-Tawhid (Supporters of Monotheism) in Sudan, posted a message on a website used by militants claiming responsibility for the killings. The group said it was fighting efforts to "Christianise" Sudan.

Relatives of Granville and Rahama asked for the death sentence. The four men denied carrying out the killing and said confessions had been extracted under torture. Before their escape, they were on death row awaiting execution.

Sudan, which hosted al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in the 1990s, has been on a U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism since 1993.

Granville was the first U.S. government official murdered in Khartoum in three decades.

(Reporting by Andrew Heavens; Editing by Janet Lawrence and Peter Cooney)

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