Sudan removed from US terror list ahead of possible Israel normalisation
Government in Khartoum agreed to pay £250M in compensation for al-Qaeda attacks in 1998, after a meeting between its military leader and the Israeli PM earlier this year
The United States has removed Sudan from a list of state sponsors of terrorism after the government in Khartoum agreed to pay £250 million in compensation for al-Qaeda attacks on two US embassies in east Africa in 1998.
The deal, which means the effective end of sanctions, paves the way for Sudan and Israel to normalise ties, after Sudan earlier agreed to allow flights to Israel to pass over its airspace.
It follows a meeting with Sudan’s military head, Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Uganda earlier this year. Netanyahu later said that the states were “establishing cooperative relations”.
Sudan is currently led by a three-year transitional government comprising the military after dictator Omar al-Bashir, 76, was finally toppled last year following mass protests.
Bashir, who came to power in a coup in 1989, has already been convicted of corruption and is now being tried by the International Criminal Court on genocide charges for his role in the Darfur conflict in 2003, in which 300,000 people were killed.
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