A team of US aviation experts has arrived in Kenya and will soon travel to Sudan to assist in the probe of last monthâs helicopter crash that killed Sudanese Vice President John Garang, the US Embassy here said yesterday. The five-strong team from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) arrived in Nairobi on Sunday and is expected to depart shortly to join the investigation being conducted jointly by the Sudanese government and Garangâs ex-rebel Sudan Peopleâs Liberation Movement (SPLM), it said. âThe group is here, they arrived on Sunday, but they havenât worked out a final schedule yet,â an embassy official told AFP. âThey will be investigating the crash as the NTSB does and has done in other incidents like this.â The team is headed by senior investigator Dennis Jones, who has participated in accident investigations in Sudan twice before, the Washington-based NTSB said, adding that its findings would be made public by Sudanese officials. âAll information on the progress of the investigation will be released by (Sudanâs) Government of National Unity,â it said in a statement issued last week.
Garang and 13 others were killed in a helicopter crash on July 30. Khartoum, the SPLM, Garangâs widow and foreign diplomats have all said the crash was an accident due most likely to poor weather and visibility and possible pilot error. But on Friday, Museveni said the cause was unclear and could have been the result of âan external factor,â suggesting for the first time that the crash might have been due to foul play.
| "I mean, it's my personal helicopter and it's never killed me! Kinda coincidental that it killed poor John, ain't it?" |